MY SAY….NO ONE SAYS IT BETTER THAN VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
ON FACT CHECKING AND MODERATORS:
‘‘Fact-checking’
Few any longer believe in fact-checking, largely because it was exposed as an arm of progressive campaigns.
The embarrassing recent statements of Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, were a frightening synopsis of rank bias defined up as disinterested audit. So were the obsequious check-ins by toady journalists with the Clinton campaign to remind Podesta, Inc. of their own lack of ethics.
Fact-checkers inordinately go after conservatives. Or they make up rules about what constitute “facts” as they go along, providing context and supposed noble intent to water down progressive inaccuracies. Or they use adverbs like “mostly” to suggest that false liberal assertions are “mostly” true and other accurate statements of non-liberals are “mostly” false. Fact-checking is postmodern truth that depends on who says something and for what purpose.
When Hillary Clinton in the second debate directed the audience to her own website to “fact-check” Trump, we came full circle from naiveté to farce.
Fact-checking might have been a neutral concept, not inherently better or worse than the original “facts” themselves — given that it is entirely predicated on the character and ability of those who fact-check (who, as we see from WikiLeaks, can be just as sanctimonious and deceitful as the politicians they audit). Fact-checking in the age of the Internet arena will go the way of America Online or Myspace.
Debate Moderators
There are no such persons any longer as “debate moderators.” The enterprise has devolved into artifice, in which the moderator is supposed to argue with the conservative candidate, “fact-check” him or her in mediis rebus, while being deferential to the like-minded progressive candidate.
Debate moderators follow assumed premises: an Anderson Cooper, Candy Crawley, Lester Holt, or Martha Raddatz envision themselves as crusaders hammering away at selfish and dangerous conservatives, in behalf of an ignorant audience that needs their enlightened help to avoid being duped. In a few of the worst cases, a scheduled debate question is leaked to the liberal candidate to ensure she is not embarrassed.
If a conservative candidate seems to have tied his opponent, the liberal moderator — witness a Matt Lauer — is considered a sell-out, soon to be shunned by the right people. Most are thus deterred from moderating “incorrectly.”
After 2016, we should either let the candidates go at it, or, better yet, let robot time keepers run things.” The entire column can be read below.
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