CNN debate format was an enormous blunder
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PHOTO CREDIT: AUSTIN STEELE/CNN
The flaws in how CNN conducted the first presidential debate Thursday night were foreseeable and then magnified by actual events.
As a result, everyone is talking about the donkey in the room and barely about the elephant.
A brief review of the good and the awful of CNN’s format:
No studio audience: Smart move.
Muted microphones when the other guy spoke: Smart move.
Order of topics: Abysmal judgment. The questions about the main concerns particular to each candidate needed to come first, not last. Order conveys importance. It is not bias to recognize that Donald Trump’s past and planned efforts to establish authoritarian rule are an abnormally important issue.
No real-time fact checking: A completely irresponsible decision. This wasn’t a heat-of-battle failure by the moderators, either. It was a derelict plan adopted beforehand. This would be a mistake no matter who the candidates were. To do this with Trump is mind boggling.
Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash did well at repeating questions when a candidate’s first answer was evasive. But that’s not fact checking. Leaving it to candidates to accurately correct each other is fantasyland. The audience needs the credibility of a detached journalist. CNN eventually did provide detailed fact checking -- after the debate. Too late.
In a poll published Saturday by Data For Progress, 53% of 800 likely voters who watched or read about the debate said the moderators did not do enough to fact check the candidates.
The troubling consequence of CNN’s format is that Trump’s deranged statements and torrent of lies – three times as many falsehoods as Joe Biden – floated uninterrupted into the public consciousness. Recognizing that he wasn’t going to get called out, Trump got more deranged and the lies more torrential as the debate went on.
To compound the problem, most media conversations after the fact focused not on Trump but on Biden’s oral coherence. (For both of them, mental competence is a legitimate issue to evaluate; you just have to decide if you think 90 very bad minutes of spontaneous thinking and speaking sufficiently measures Biden’s mental competence.)
TV networks shouldn’t produce debates that have no method for real-time accountability. Networks need off-stage fact checkers who feed information to moderators, plus designated minutes for moderators to confront candidates about their falsehoods. Even if it means one candidate gets more questions than the other. Even if it means a longer debate.
Another proposal is one I advocated a year ago and that drew more than normal disagreement from readers: Record debates live but show them hours later. This allows for addition of on-screen graphics that address any misstatements not adequately remedied during recording.
I’m aware some number of viewers liked the minimalist moderation Thursday night. Don’t care. CNN is not excused.