None of the major networks has publicly committed to doing concurrent on-screen fact-checking during the debate. | AP Photo Networks reject on-screen fact checking during debate Despite Clinton's demand that Trump be held accountable, outlets say they aren't prepared to weigh in while candidates speak.

To fact check or not — that was the debate before the debate, one that pitted Hillary Clinton’s backers against Donald Trump supporters and even engaged some top journalists.

But as the hour of the debate drew closer, only the comparatively small Bloomberg TV network publicly said it would be doing any sort of on-screen fact checks during the debate, running them periodically as part of their headline scroll.


Despite the demands from the Clinton campaign for more media fact checks in the wake of Matt Lauer’s failure to correct Trump’s assertions at NBC’s commander-in-chief forum, none of the major networks has publicly committed to doing concurrent on-screen fact-checking during the debate, when the audience is highest.

That would leave the moderator, NBC News anchor Lester Holt, on his own in deciding whether to weigh in on the candidates’ claims — as both sides tried to publicly pressure him in the hours leading up to the debate.

Democrats including vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine called fact-checking crucial to the debate, while Republicans echoed Trump’s demand that Holt refrain from intervening the way that Candy Crowley did in the second 2012 debate between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, when she sought to correct Romney on his claim that Obama hadn’t characterized the Benghazi attacks as terrorism.

While on-screen fact-checking could help expose inaccurate or misleading assertions without interrupting the flow of the debate, nearly all of the major cable or broadcast networks, including Univision and Telemundo, said that they would not use any sort on screen fact check or graphics. Of the networks POLITICO surveyed, only Bloomberg TV confirmed that it will be doing on-screen fact checking during the debate.

Network spokespeople said the on-screen fact checks would need to be nearly instantaneous to correlate with the answer the candidate is giving, leading to some high editorial and technical hurdles. Only NBC, Holt’s home network, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Thus, the burden of keeping the candidates honest will likely come down to Holt, the only other person on the stage.

Debate moderators and questioners have been more frequent targets than usual during this election cycle, with the Republican National Committee even going so far as to pull planned debates with NBC-related networks because it didn’t like how CNBC handled an early primary-election debate.

The journalists moderating the debates and providing questions have been singled out by critics in both parties for offenses ranging from asking too many “gotcha” questions to tossing too many softballs. Some moderators were criticized for losing control of the debates, while others were knocked for being too controlling themselves. Lauer, who sat in silence while Trump insisted he never supported the Iraq war – despite well-known footage of him saying the opposite – was only the most recent big-name anchor to emerge from a highly touted campaign forum with his reputation challenged.

And both the Trump and Clinton camps have made it clear that they’ll be scrutinizing Holt very closely.

"These are two of the most difficult people in American politics to interview for very different reasons,” said veteran CBS News anchor and debate moderator Bob Schieffer. "So I think a moderators [of the three scheduled debates] are going to have their hands full. But I think all of them are veteran journalists and they will have done their homework by the time they get to the debate and they’ll do fine."

For 90 minutes, with no break, Holt will lob questions of his own choosing at the candidates, guiding how and when they will respond. Schieffer, who said he has not given advice to Holt but has to some of the other moderators, said the hardest part for a moderator is not the vaunted “fact checking” that Lauer was so criticized for not enacting, but rather keeping track of the time and making sure the candidates get to the point.

“[Moderators] are always part of the story,” Schieffer said. "When there’s someone to blame for something, people first turn to the press. That seems to be our role traditionally, that it’s our fault. You can’t help but become part of the story. You need to remember that going in. This scrutiny now is so intense, if you hadn’t been through it before you better get used to it now.”

Despite the evident pressure, handling the first debate will be a huge opportunity for Holt, who took over “Nightly News” from Brian Williams under less than ideal circumstances. Instead of a grandly orchestrated rollout, Holt took over the anchor desk with little fanfare, as all of the drama focused on Williams’ fabrications and ultimate suspension. (Williams is now back on air, anchoring for MSNBC.)

Holt has stayed away from doing any publicity ahead of the debates and stopped anchoring “Nightly News” last Tuesday to prepare for Monday night’s faceoff.

Schieffer said moderators do best when they deliver short and simple questions that force the candidates to explain themselves.

"A key question for both these candidates is 'how are you going to do that?’ ” Schieffer said. “… How are you going to get the money to do it and how are you going to put together the coalition you would need if it’s a law to get something like that passed?"

The Clinton campaign hasn’t been directly in touch with Holt about its expectations for his handling of fact-checking duties on Trump – whom Clinton allies say routinely sprinkles his interviews and debate performances with assertions that journalists know aren’t true but are reluctant to challenge. But the campaign has made little secret of its insistence that Holt hold Trump accountable.

"For the moderator to let lies like that that come out of his mouth at this debate to go unchallenged would give Donald Trump an unfair advantage,” Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri said during a conference call with reporters on Friday. "We do believe it is the role of the moderator . . . to call out those lies and to do that in real time."

But the two former presidential debate moderators, Scheiffer and Lehrer, said that’s not necessarily how they would do it. Becoming the fact checker risks putting oneself in the position of Crowley, whom many Republicans believe damaged Romney’s performance unfairly.

"My thought is yes the moderators have to fact-check, but the first fact-check opporutnity should go to the candidate themselves,” Scheiffer said. “If candidate A said something and is blatantly wrong you want to give candidate B the first opportunity to fact check that."

If the second candidate doesn’t step in, Scheiffer said, the moderator has “the responsibility” to “state for the record what the facts are.”

Jim Lehrer, the former PBS Newshour anchor who has moderated 12 presidential debates, said he also would strongly prefer to have the candidates fact-check each other than to step in himself.

"Usually the way you do that with simply the candidate there, you say 'would you agree with that, is that how you see it?’ ” Lehrer said. “In debates I tried to not do that [fact check] because I didn’t want to get in the way."

Both Schieffer and Lehrer said it’s almost guaranteed that Holt will be criticized by one side or the other, if not both. When Lehrer stayed mostly out of Obama and Romney’s way during the first presidential debate in 2012, he was criticized for not taking enough control. That same year, Schieffer was criticized for allowing the final debate to stray from foreign policy, the chosen topic for that debate.

“This will be the ultimate ‘Rashomon’ test,” Lehrer said, referring to the famous movie in which an event is viewed differently by each character. “They always are, this one will just be a little more extreme."

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.