Thread by @jayrosen_nyu

I may be proven wrong, but I think the debates will be a fact-checking fail. Nothing like a real time check on Trump's firehose of falsehood will unfold. At best we'll see symbolic pushback on one or two lies, and his reaction will introduce more lies. 1/

Some reasons I think that: the sheer volume of lies Trump is able to broadcast in a single answer to question about, say, mail-in voting; the blowback from his defenders that each moderator knows is coming if they try it; the asymmetry factor, meaning— cjr.org/political_pres… 2/

— it will feel like bias if Trump is corrected a lot and Biden is not for lack of cause; the manifest need to move on; the weak precedent set by White House correspondents on live fact-checking (true, the debates are a different setting, but even so...) cnn.com/2020/08/20/pol… 3/

Also: "You are not the story" is a unanimous belief among Washington journalists. And that sounds totally right— until you try to picture what would happen in any forceful attempt to keep this man from lying his way through the debate: you would become the story. Won't happen. 4/

Then there's what's known as Brandolini's law. Add the pressures of live TV and extreme polarization to this maxim, and the moderator's escape route is clear: let @ddale8 and @GlennKesslerWP handle it after the debate. It's on Biden to respond during. 5/

"We don't expect Chris [Wallace] or our other moderators to be fact-checkers," said Frank Fahrenkopf, co-chair of the Commission that organizes the debates. "The minute the TV is off, there are going to be plenty of fact-checkers."
cnn.com/videos/media/2… 6/

"The moderator should be seen little and heard even less. It is up to the candidates to ask the follow-up questions and challenge one another... I don’t consider that being passive, I consider it being effective." —Jim Lehrer after he did a 2012 debate. politico.com/story/2012/10/… 7/

Well, there it is. Chris Wallace is the moderator of Tuesday's debate. “My job is to be as invisible as possible." He has called fact-checking by the moderator "a step too far.'" nytimes.com/2020/09/28/bus…

The moderator is a symbolic figure no matter how active or passive. If Chris Wallace thinks his job is "to be as invisible as possible," then instead of the proposition that there are some limits and some facts, he will stand for "everything is permitted and nothing is true." 9/

"You can't be fact checking them. It's not the job of the candidate to be fact checking them."

That is what Karine Jean-Pierre, Chief of Staff to Kamala Harris, said on David Plouffe's podcast about the prospect of debating Pence and Trump. stitcher.com/podcast/campai… (29:34) 10/

Let's review the bidding. Co-chair of the debate commission says it's not the role of the moderator to fact check. Moderator of the first debate says: not my job to fact check. And a key aide to Biden/Harris says it's not the candidate's job to fact check, either. Encouraged? 11/