ABC and debates: What a difference 64 years make

Watching the Sept. 10 debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, as ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis constantly interrupted the former with their fact-checking seven times while never challenging the latter despite her numerous falsehoods, the name Timothy Donaghy came to mind. Some sports enthusiasts may still remember him.

For 13 years (1994-2007), Donaghy served as a professional basketball referee. During that time, he officiated 772 regular season games and 26 playoff games. His career came to an abrupt end in 2007 when he was caught gambling on games he refereed. Making numerous controversial calls, there was obviously a financial incentive for him to do so. While the presidential debate moderators did not have the same financial incentive in making their wrong calls, they clearly had an ideological one.

While much of the post-debate criticism unsurprisingly falls along political party lines, there are some points about the moderators warranting consideration.

Even before Harris agreed to the debate, which originally was to involve Trump and the Democratic Party’s then standard bearer Joe Biden, the legacy media has clearly favored the Democrats. (Interestingly, a study by left-leaning Stanford University determined there is a pronounced liberal inclination among numerous networks like ABC.) Harris replaced Biden on the ticket and then agreed to the debate, primarily because of her close ABC ties. But her supporters were ecstatic for two reasons.

Firstly, a senior Disney executive and former ABC News executive, Dana Walden, is an extraordinarily close friend of Harris’. While they have known each other since 1994, their husbands’ friendship goes back to the 1980s. Walden has supported Harris campaigns at least since 2003. There is also a relationship between ABC and Disney in that ABC Owned Television Stations is a division of Disney Entertainment. This raises the issue of whether Walden would or did exert any influence over the moderators.

One may respond to this with “so what” but there is a precedent that has been set among Democrats justifying such a concern based on relationships between politicians and those in the news business. We cannot forget that in her 2016 presidential run, prior to a town-hall debate with Trump, Hillary Clinton was quietly given a list of topics that would be addressed by the moderator. The leaker of the information was her former crony, Donna Brazile, who was working under contract for CNN at the time. And, even after the public learned about it, Brazile’s sole regret was that she was caught. CNN terminated Brazile’s contract, although behind closed doors it probably supported her actions as in line with their ideological leftist mindset.

Secondly, what is much more telling is, according to a study by the Media Research Center, it was determined that one of the moderators – Muir – who hosts “ABC World News Tonight,” has a 100% rating of providing positive coverage of Harris ever since she replaced Biden. Meanwhile, the coverage on Trump has been 93% negative. This cannot be dismissed simply as chance but, rather, has to be seen as a strong indicator that anti-Trumpism is firmly ensconced within the network’s mindset. While the media’s leftist leanings were evidenced as well by findings of favorable Harris coverage by CBS (94%) and NBC (71%), ABC’s Trump hostility was a clear standout at 100%.

To a large extent, moderators set the tone for a debate, hopefully presenting questions to both candidates that will open the door for voters to better understand the substance of their policies. The Trump debates always seem to be agenda-driven by the moderators. But, while almost every presidential debate is marred by candidates making inaccurate statements, there are three major mistakes a moderator can make to tilt a debate unfairly toward one candidate. All three were committed during this debate and all three benefited Harris.

The first is when a moderator demonstrates a personal bias by repeatedly fact-checking the responses of one candidate while giving the other a free pass.

The second is to hold one candidate accountable for failing to answer a question asked but not the other, shielding the latter from doing so.

The third – and one that totally undermines a moderator’s credibility – is to proclaim, based on fact-checking, that a candidate has made an inaccurate statement when, in fact, the candidate has not.

The third occurred twice Tuesday night. Once Trump was fact-checked and declared to have been inaccurate in suggesting a radical stance existed among some Democrats in their support of post-birth abortion. In fact, it was just such a position that was taken by the former Democratic governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam. The erroneous fact-check occurred a second time when Trump alleged there were reports of immigrants from Haiti eating local pets. While the comment triggered Harris to laugh in disbelief, evidence does support the story.

While even the liberal media criticized ABC’s bias, we can only wonder whether it was triggered by an honest sense of unfairness or rather by the fact ABC was just too obvious in flaunting its bias. The debate lineup was clearly one of Harris and the two moderators against Trump. Babylon Bee satirist Seth Dillon hit the nail on the head with his quip during the debate, “Kamala is holding the moderators back in this joint debate against Trump. Definitely the weakest link.”

The first ever nationally televised presidential debate pitted Sen. John F. Kennedy, D-Mass., against Vice President Richard M. Nixon 64 years ago this month. The moderator was ABC anchorman Howard K. Smith. The interaction by Smith with the two candidates was very professional, representing a time when ABC valued journalistic integrity and educating listeners about candidates’ positions. Despite the attraction of the young JFK to the media, Smith’s moderation was not driven by a left-leaning bias. It had him focused strictly on understanding the political issues of the day. Those were the good old days!