The recent revelation by ABC News' Linsey Davis, one of the moderators for last week's presidential debate, has ignited a firestorm of controversy.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Davis openly admitted that the moderation strategy was to fact-check former President Donald Trump—exclusively. Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, was left untouched by this level of scrutiny, even when she repeated widely debunked claims.
Davis, along with her co-moderator David Muir, fact-checked Trump seven times during the debate. As noted by Breitbart News, many of these fact-checks were inaccurate. Yet, despite Harris’s use of debunked stories, such as the infamous Charlottesville "very fine people" hoax, she was spared from any similar interrogation.
This discrepancy has raised questions about the integrity of the debate's moderation and the fairness of the fact-checking process.
The crux of Davis’s justification stems from a perceived leniency towards Trump in a previous debate. According to the New York Post, Davis explained that the decision to scrutinize Trump’s statements so rigorously was a response to concerns raised during the June CNN debate between Trump and President Joe Biden.
In that encounter, Biden’s faltering performance eventually led to his early withdrawal from the race, but the moderators had allowed several of Trump’s remarks to go unchecked, causing worry among observers that false claims were being left unchallenged.
Davis’s admission that the moderators prepared to fact-check Trump while giving Harris a pass on her repetition of discredited claims—like the "fine people hoax"—has only fueled ongoing criticisms of media bias.
Harris’s use of this hoax during her 2020 vice presidential debate with Mike Pence had been fact-checked live on stage by Pence himself, yet no such correction occurred during this debate. In fact, the pattern continued, as even in the CNN debate with Biden, fact-checking seemed to be applied selectively, leaving Biden’s use of the same hoax unchecked.
This selective fact-checking practice undermines the integrity of the debate format and leaves viewers wondering if the moderators are playing favorites rather than providing an even-handed assessment of all candidates. Such revelations call into question the role of media in moderating these critical political events and whether the pursuit of fairness is being compromised by partisan agendas.