Whoever you think won the debate, ABC lost it

Well, well, well, if it isn’t that bridge we knew we’d have to cross when we got here. I’m referring to Tuesday night’s presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. As far as the independent vote is concerned, they likely weren’t swayed one way or the other. As for the other two parties? Well, the same could be said.

The truth is that both candidates have solid camps, possibly to their detriment, and one thing I’ll never do is encourage our readers to vote any particular way. I may suggest approaching differing opinions with open mindedness and respect, but I’ll never tell you how to vote. Therein lies the foundation to this week’s column. 

You know, it could possibly be said that I jump between party lines like my feet are on fire, but that’s because I believe in the necessity of objectivity and neutrality in news reporting. And when it boils down to it, what I think is completely irrelevant.

So, the million dollar question is … who lost the debate? And my answer is ABC News. I say this facetiously. but I’m not entirely kidding. I thought each candidate did a fine job. Although there was the occasional dodging of specific questions and vague responses, it wasn’t a total blowout on either side, in my humble opinion. The most shocking part of the debate to me was the obvious favoritism toward Vice President Harris on the part of the moderators. 

Now hear me out before you start sharpening your pitchforks. Long before I became a reporter I learned that the golden rule of journalism is neutrality, well that and integrity but the two are synonymous in many ways. One anomaly that I’ve seen in the past eight years or so has been the dissolving of that imperative standard. This last debate emphasized that notion. The moderators for the event were David Muir and Linsy Davis of ABC News. 

I stopped watching televised news coverage quite some time ago because it made me sick how blatant the bias was toward either the left or the right depending on the channel you tuned in to. For conservatives, Fox News was your best bet. If liberal news was your flavor you’d likely tune into NBC, ABC, or CNN, the latter being the most objective of the three. Regardless, it’s a problem and I never could really stomach it, but I was flabbergasted after watching Tuesday’s display, and I wasn’t alone.

It is worth fact checking certain comments, for example Trump declared that Democrats supported killing babies after birth and that simply isn’t true. Davis responded, “There is no state in the country where it is legal to kill a baby after it was born.” And she was correct. But in my opinion it is the responsibility of the other candidate to make that statement. There is also a time and place for fact checking, and during the debate isn’t it. That is essentially the point of the debate, giving the other candidate an opportunity to address these issues as they arise. After all, ABC News won’t be hiding out in the Oval Office closet-feeding information to the president in the event of a sticky situation during their presidency.

Another example is when Muir asked Trump whether he admitted to losing the 2020 election. Trump refused to acknowledge he did despite the fact that he has been quoted as saying such on three separate occasions. Trump blamed sarcasm, which garnered the response from Muir, “I didn’t detect the sarcasm.”

Like myself, what Muir thinks is completely irrelevant. Whether he did or did not detect sarcasm doesn’t matter one iota. Now listen, I’m all for speaking the truth and calling a spade a spade, but guess how many times Harris was corrected? Zero. Not one. And I have a problem with that.

Harris said, “If Donald Trump were to be reelected, he will sign a national abortion ban.” That simply isn’t true. He expressed that he would kick the decision back to the states. If you research the fact checking afterward, when I believe it should be done, you’ll see that much of both candidates’ responses and claims needed further context. There were also many examples where sarcasm was heavily detectable. For example, Trump didn’t exchange love letters with Kim Jong Un and Harris wasn’t the reason that Trump took a bullet to the head. Yet again, not the responsibility of the moderators to point that out on the spot.

Okay, I think I’ve more than made my point, so I’ll close with this thought. Why is reporting unbiased news so important? Usually I’d plug a quote in here, but I feel so strongly about this one that I’m going to take it. 

Journalists are the eyes and ears of the world and require an immeasurable amount of trust from their readers and sources. In return, we have the obligation to give it to you straight, and when feelings get involved that can be very difficult. But that’s the job. You should never know who a journalist is going to vote for.

Furthermore, misleading information is as dangerous as wrong information and that is truly what I believe happened during the debate. I can promise you that here at the Leader we take unbiased and accurate reporting very seriously. We can sometimes get a little loose-lipped in our opinion columns, but that’s an appropriate place for it. Luckily, you have a space for that too, it’s called a Letter to the Editor. Keep them coming, folks.