With the first presidential debate right around the corner CNN’s Brian Stelter amped up his call for debate moderators to be fact-checkers, during Sunday’s Reliable Sources. Of course, most of his concern is focused on Donald Trump with Hillary Clinton being an afterthought, seeing as he lambasted NBC’s Matt Lauer for not doing it. “Does a unique candidate like Donald Trump require a different kind of moderating,” Stelter inquired to veteran debate moderator Jim Lehrer.
“No, no absolutely not,” Lehrer declared definitively, “Remember, the debate for 90 minutes, people are going to be seeing the candidates, they’re going to see Donald Trump.” Lehrer shot Stelter down arguing that nearly every person who is intending to vote will be watching, and that there will be “thousands” of journalists waiting in the wings to pounce on Trump if and when he lies. “And Donald Trump is not going to be able to quote, “get away” with anything,” he continued, “It’s all going to be there for everybody to see.”
And that was after Stelter narrowed his fact-checking concern to Trump specifically. Earlier in the segment Stelter wondered if it was “appropriate for Holt” to fact check the candidates. Lehrer wasn’t a fan, noting:
I think, if a moderator sits at the table and starts moderating with the idea, “Oh, I’ve got to make sure that all of the facts are checked.” Somebody says something, or whatever, that’s a different role. The moderator should be out of the picture as much as possible, and whether he is a potted plant or not, it is irrelevancy, because when it is all over, it is about the two candidates.
Stelter did find a former debate moderator to agree with him. Former ABC White House Correspondent Ann Compton, who stated, “Well you know, there is a reason why broadcast journalists are very often the moderators for this. We hate to leave absolute errors of fact on the table.”
Later on in the show he questioned Janet Brown, the Executive Director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, if she thought Holt should be a fact-checker. “I think that personally, if you start get into the fact-checking, I am not sure what is a big fact, and what is a little fact,” she explained, “And if you and I have different sources of information, does your source about the unemployment rate agree with my source?”
Brown’s response seemed to shred Stelter’s long time push to have moderators fact-check Trump over Clinton. And the fact that he tried to justify it by labeling Trump “unique” and insinuating he required a “different kind of moderating” shows that. Stelter has a history of attacking his fellow journalists for exposing negative facts about Clinton, notably the Associated Press report that showed connections between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. He also sprinted to call Clinton’s 9/11 health episode a conspiracy, while letting Trump’s detractors call him “rancid meat.”