Fox News Falsely Claims CBS Moderators Broke Fact-Checking Rules — Undermining JD Vance’s Strong Performance

By any objective measure, Senator JD Vance had a very good night during Tuesday’s Vice Presidential debate hosted by CBS News.

If you were looking for analysis on Fox News to see how the candidates performed, however, that reasonable takeaway would be diminished by a repeated insistence that moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan somehow “broke the rules” by fact-checking Vance.

The thing is, CBS News’s debate rules did not include anything about fact-checking. Further, the absolute eagerness of many Fox News opinion hosts to complain about the “refs” is so great that a false claim was repeatedly amplified — which significantly undermines what would otherwise be considered a triumph for former President Donald Trump’s running mate.

Half an hour into Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate, JD Vance protested to Brennan, who clarified comments about Springfield the Ohio Senator had just made. “Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check,” Vance insisted. Dana Milbank wrote for The Washington Post, “It was a lie on top of another lie, supplemented by a pair of other lies, in support of an even bigger lie.”

You see, there was nothing in the rules about fact-checking. Don’t just take my word for it; check them out here, posted by USA Today:

There will be 90 minutes of debate time, with two breaks of four minutes each.
There will be no audience.
The two moderators, Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, will be seated and will be the only ones asking questions of the candidates.
Candidates will stand behind podiums for the duration of the debate, Gov. Walz on stage left/screen right and Sen. Vance on stage right/screen left.
Candidates will have two minutes for closing statements. A virtual coin toss was held on Sept. 26. Sen. Vance won and elected to go second with his closing statement.
Candidates will be introduced by the moderators in order of incumbent party.
No props or pre-written notes will be allowed on stage.
No topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates.
Campaign staff may not interact with candidates during breaks.
Candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.
Event space will be available for staff and candidate walk-throughs to be scheduled in advance.
Lights will indicate time left, with numeric countdown: green until 15 seconds; solid yellow until five seconds; flashing red at five seconds; solid red at zero.
CBS News reserves the right to turn off candidate microphones.
Moderators will seek to enforce timing agreements.
For each question, the candidate asked the question will get two minutes to answer and the other candidate will get two minutes to respond. Then, each candidate gets one minute for further rebuttals. At the discretion of the moderators, candidates may get an additional minute each to continue a discussion.

The rules do not include anything about fact-checking. Before the debate, CBS announced that moderators would mainly “facilitate” and sparingly interrupt for fact checks. Here’s how David Gilmour reported on the fact-checking for Mediaite before the debate:

Throughout the 90-minute debate at CBS News studios in New York, moderators, however, may step in to offer clarifications if facts go unchecked or “if something egregious is said,” the source noted.

“The goal of a debate is for the candidates to debate and to hold one another accountable, and CBS News is going to provide opportunities for that,” the source familiar explained. “A debate is not an interview, and the format is very different.”

Elsewhere, CBS will provide real-time fact-checking of the proceedings. The CBS News Confirmed unit, consisting of forensic journalists and data experts, will be verifying claims and addressing misinformation on a live blog, on social media and in post-debate coverage on the network.

There are plenty of reasonable criticisms of the debate moderators. Many conservatives found their demeanor to be smug and arrogant, particularly surrounding fact-checking. That said, alleging that they “broke rules” that never existed? Well, that’s just flat-out embarrassing for a network that claims to be a news outlet.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: Don’t report that “rules were broken” if you don’t know what the rules are.

For example, Fox & Friends’ writers and producers did Ainsley Earhardt no favors Wednesday morning when she read copy from the prompter that inadvertently paraded the show’s ignorance of the debate rules.

In post-debate analysis, Brit Hume and Laura Ingraham appeared to be way more eager to criticize the moderators than to praise Vance for what seemed clearly his best night since being named Trump’s running mate.

“Well, the moderators were obnoxious and made it feel like three-on-one on Vance,” Hume said. “And Vance was just fine… His skills as a debater and a speaker seem to have been honed to some extent by just these several months on the campaign trail. And for one so young, he seemed – in terms of his knowledge of policy – to run rings around poor Governor Walz, who I think did not have a very great night.”

Ingraham agreed and blasted the “smug and arrogant bias on the part of those moderators.”

“Almost every question was designed to make Republicans look bad,” she added. “I don’t think he could’ve done better under the circumstances. And I think that is very reassuring to the public who thought he was perhaps an ogre or anti-woman or didn’t like kids or some strange concoction of the stereotypes that they were selling.”

Look, there is room for reasonable criticism leveled towards the moderators. But the laser focus and deep commitment to constantly complaining about media bias and how all Republicans seem to be victims in this setting? Well, it comes at a legitimate cost of not giving Vance proper credit for what was a terrific night.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.