The moderators of last night’s ABC debate demonstrated why it’s a bad idea to fact check live in a debate.

▪️When a moderator fact checks, it gives the implicit notion to the audience that anything not fact checked is truthful. They become the arbiter of truth, which is not their role. Their role is to facilitate a civil and substantive debate.

▪️Fact checking invariably brings bias. What to fact check and how often? Many things politicians say are either false or on a spectrum of misleading, missing context, etc. Tasking a moderator to fairly police this is nearly impossible. In practice they’ll just stick to what stands out as false to them, which will be biased. That’s what happened last night.

▪️Fact checking is often complex. This was briefly shown in the exchange with Trump and the moderators over crime. What sort of crime are you referring to (violent crime, property crime, etc.)? Which cities or states? What time frame are we referring to, over the past year? Since 2020? FBI stats are limited by what local authorities report, so what are they actually telling us? In general, crime has fallen over the past couple years, but is still up since 2020, and in certain locales violent crime and thefts are up dramatically and haven’t declined. Moderators cannot and should not be parsing through this.

▪️Most fact checks cannot be done on the spot, you need to check sources and do research. On the spot fact checks rely on memory and the limited knowledge the moderators have. Which means they are also highly influenced by bias.

▪️So what to do when politicians shamelessly lie during a debate? It’s their opponent’s job to fact check and correct them! That’s why it’s a debate. If they are unable to do this effectively, then they’re bad at debating. But it’s not the moderator’s job. The moderator’s job is to allow each side a chance to get their voices heard and respond to their opponent.