During tonight’s presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Bloomberg TV will conduct real time “onscreen fact checks” of statements made by the candidates.
According to POLITICO, the channel’s decision to conduct the fact checks “sets Bloomberg apart from the other major TV networks, none of whom have committed to doing on-screen fact checks during the debate.”
Other networks will save the fact-checking for the analysis segments after the debate.
While the media continues to catch heat for failing to follow-up on Trump’s lies and obfuscations, especially in the wake of Matt Lauer’s disastrous performance interviewing Trump during an NBC presidential forum where he let the candidate off the hook on several false statements, Hillary supporters have demanded a more aggressive fact-checking approach to the upcoming debates.
“We’re really focused on this opportunity that Hillary has to speak directly to the voters on the issues. But we are concerned that Donald Trump may lie, he may throw misinformation out there, and that Hillary will have to spend all of her time trying to correct the record rather than talking about the things she wants to accomplish,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said on CBS This Morning.
“All that we’re asking if that the record be checked. So if Donald Trump lies, which he has repeatedly done in the past, that that be simply checked.”
From POLITICO:
Spokespeople for the networks told POLITICO that on-screen fact checks would be hard to execute in real-time, which is why they were opting out. That leaves the real-time fact-checking up to NBC’s Lester Holt, the debate moderator, or Clinton herself.
NPR says they’ll also conduct real time fact checks of the debate online.
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