CBS’s Fact-Checks in the VP Debate Will Come Via QR Code

Fact-checking is the most important part of moderating any debate. Some media commentators may bristle at this assertion, but what’s the point if both debaters are spewing a constant stream of lies? If CBS allows JD Vance, an admitted liar who has given up his right to be treated like an adult, to continue to spread his racist libel on their airwaves unchallenged, what’s the difference between CBS and the right-wing dipshits accused of being Kremlin stooges by the DOJ who say they’re big dumb babies who don’t know anything?

The network hosting the debate imbues it with its own credibility, but as CNN demonstrated in their fact-check free debate earlier this year, the debate itself can turn around and damage the network’s credibility as it gets defined by the lies they broadcasted to millions of people. If the moderators aren’t doing some kind of fact-checking, why are they there? If you’re not going to do any journalism in front of two people vying to be some of the most powerful in the world, the networks should at least be honest with us and hire a famous actor to “moderate” and fully admit that this is all spectacle and no substance.

ABC drew rave reviews from everyone outside the Trump campaign for fact-checking his disastrous debate in real time to his face—the best way to do it—when Trump made glaring lies like how babies are supposedly murdered after they’re born. That’s journalism.

CBS seems to want to find a middle ground between CNN and ABC. The noise from the Trump campaign over ABC’s fact-checks likely has a hand in this, and we should never forget how old CBS CEO Les Moonves famously said Trump “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS” (he also said the same thing about Super PACs in 2012).

Fact-checking is antithetical to the Republican Party’s unreality-based politics, and any ground ceded to them on this is a failure by the media to defend the basic tenets of journalism. People like Jake Tapper would prefer to largely be stenographers, simply repeating whatever people in power tell them, and then putting it on the viewer to inform themselves when viewers are coming to people like Jake Tapper and CNN explicitly to be informed by alleged journalists.

Instead of interrupting JD Vance by a moderator tonight, CBS will display a QR code on the screen that will take viewers to CBS News’ website, where around 20 journalists will be posting real time fact-checks telling viewers that people are not, in fact, eating the dogs. My knee-jerk reaction to this is cynicism, as it feels like a way to pass the buck. Journalists never want to make themselves the center of the story, but this classic attitude reflects the naivete in the belief system of objective, neutral journalism, as journalists are people just like everyone they cover who also don’t have total control over the events impacting their lives.

If CBS becomes the center of the story because JD Vance has a problem with them doing their jobs, then that’s the story: JD Vance is hostile to the truth. This retreat from the ground ABC reclaimed for journalism in the wake of CNN’s failure is dismaying to see, as by definition, a second-screen is less important than the first one. JD Vance’s lies will likely be the takeaway for most of those who are less technologically savvy and don’t quite understand what that weird pixelated thing on their TV is, and CBS’s fact-checks of Vance will very likely reach less people and be less impactful than ABC’s fact-checks of Trump were.

But it’s not nothing. Second-screen advertising has been a focal point for at least a decade now, and recent research suggests 84 percent of U.S. adults multitask on a second screen while watching TV. How CBS’s moderators frame their questions combined with the timing and messaging around the QR code will have a big say in its impact. There’s a way to pull this off that softens the fact-check in JD Vance’s face, while still implying what he is specifically lying about and making it obvious where to find that information. The press has changed a lot for the better since Trump first ascended down that escalator over eight years ago, and this is an opportunity for CBS to rise to the occasion that JD Vance’s admitted lies present.

JD Vance will lie tonight. He lies every hour of every day. His entire existence is a lie, and his opinion polling that makes Sarah Palin look like an inspired choice by comparison proves that most of America knows it. CBS has two choices tonight: they can lazily toss up a QR code on screen with no context to pretend they’re fact-checking an admitted liar who is one of our most unpopular Americans, or they can use it to do their jobs.