Contrary to conventional wisdom, election-year debates hold significant value for voters, and there is a way to enhance this value: by replacing journalists with more suitable moderators.
For decades, journalists have been the go-to choice for debate moderators. Before the rise of cable news and when the Commission on Presidential Debates had control over the process, moderators were from various networks. However, the current system, where the moderators are exclusively from the network hosting the debate, has drawbacks.
The most significant problem with journalists taking on the role of moderator is that they do not ask good debate questions; they ask interview questions. The questions often have more to do with the candidate than an issue. The result is that tens of millions of people turn off their televisions and are less informed about how candidates will govern.
It is not a recent phenomenon. In 1988, during the second presidential debate between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, the first question from CNN’s Bernard Shaw was: “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”
That question is absurd. A better question would have been, “Governor Dukakis, there is a debate about the integrity of the death penalty. Do you support or oppose the death penalty and why?”
In the debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, ABC’s David Muir asked Trump, referring to Jan. 6, “Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?” In what world does that question elicit debate? And what is the debate topic? Trump’s regret or lack thereof? It’s nonsensical.
In the recent vice presidential debate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was asked about his fib that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Considering how few interviews Walz (or Harris) does, it was a pertinent question but certainly not a relevant debate question.
The issue with such tedious and extraneous questions from moderators is that they leave little time for matters of critical importance. Social Security and Medicare will go insolvent within the next 10 years, and there hasn’t been a single question on the subject. In the Trump-Harris debate, Harris mentioned it in passing, with her flair for stringing together words without meaning. She said, “My work that is about protecting Social Security and Medicare is based on long-standing work that I have done.”
There have been no meaningful questions about Russia’s war with Ukraine, China’s threat against Taiwan, the growing war in the Middle East and Iran’s role in Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel, the ballooning deficit, or the $35 trillion national debt. Drug overdose deaths are still in the six figures, and while those numbers fell in 2023 for the first time since 2018, they have still quadrupled since 1999.
Removing journalists as moderators would also free the public from their tedious, self-aggrandizing real-time fact-checking. In 2012, CNN’s Candy Crowley “corrected” Mitt Romney for saying Barack Obama did not refer to the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stephens, as a terrorist attack.
Romney was right. Obama made a general reference to “acts of terror” in an initial statement in the Rose Garden but did not specifically refer to Benghazi as a terrorist attack. On the same day, in an interview with 60 Minutes, Obama was directly asked if it was a terrorist attack. His response? “Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans.”
Journalists were overjoyed by Crowley’s action, but it set a terrible precedent for moderators to inject themselves into the debates, especially when their fact-checking is highly selective. Everyone is aware that Trump lies with impunity. But that doesn’t excuse ABC moderators from failing to fact-check Harris even once. Journalists can fact-check to their heart’s content following a debate, but they should not insert themselves into the discussion.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
A solution that could work well is to use debate coaches, organizers, and moderators from colleges and universities. Whether the debate is set up under British Parliamentary rules, Lincoln-Douglas style, or policy only, voters who want to hear candidates discuss actual issues and policies will benefit. Viewers will see moderators they don’t know and will likely never see again.
The current format is much more about entertainment, with questions that do not inform, post-debate snap polls, “spin rooms,” pointless fact-checking, and 10-member cable news panels made up of partisans who are there not to analyze but to tell us why they think candidate A or B “won.” The system is broken. It’s time to try something new.
Andrea Ruth is a contributor to the Washington Examiner magazine.