On Thursday, however, CNN will likely receive either the blame or the praise. For the first time since 1960, a network will organize, produce and broadcast a presidential election debate – “a huge responsibility that we take very seriously,” said CNN political director David Chalian.
“CNN is under pressure to make this a good debate for voters and their viewers,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, dean of Hofstra University’s School of Communication.
The structure of the debate will be dramatically different for viewers than what they are used to: For one thing, the network has decided against a studio audience. And perhaps more importantly, CNN will turn off a candidate’s microphone when it is not their turn to speak to prevent crosstalk that could spoil the program for viewers.
CNN set those terms for the debate and the candidates agreed to them when they signed up. “The goal was to make sure we moderated a debate between these two candidates whose two different visions could be heard by the American people at home,” Chalian said.
Or as Lukasiewicz, a former NBC News executive, put it: “I think they’re trying to avoid the disaster of the Chris Wallace debate last round.”
But even within the broadcaster there is skepticism as to whether Trump will accept the microphone restriction.
“I suspect he’ll just keep talking even if the microphone is muted,” CNN anchor Jim Acosta said on television last week. His panelist, Republican strategist Jim Schultz, agreed.
“I think he’s just going to run the stop sign,” Schultz said. “…The more they try to silence him, the more problems they’re going to have, right?”
(Here, Acosta pointed out that Biden’s microphone could also pick up Trump and vice versa. However, it is not clear – even to CNN’s Chalian – whether viewers would be able to understand what he is saying.)
The Trump campaign has already announced plans to attack the credibility of the two moderators, veteran anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. On Monday, anchor Kasie Hunt abruptly ended an interview with Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt after accusing the two journalists of bias. CNN then released a statement defending their credibility – a promising start to the week.
As former moderators know all too well, it’s almost impossible to avoid criticism — both from the public and from campaigns. USA Today journalist Susan Page was criticized after moderating a 2020 vice presidential debate for allowing the candidates to exceed their allotted speaking time and for not asking enough follow-up questions.
“It’s an honor. It’s a privilege. You do your best and people will criticize you for it,” Page said. “That’s just the way it goes.”
Even before the first candidate took the stage, some questioned whether the moderators would put enough pressure on Trump regarding his denial of the 2020 election results – an issue the former president is likely to raise.
Declaration for American Democracy, a coalition of advocacy groups including Common Cause and the Sierra Club, sent a letter to CNN leadership late last week calling on the network’s anchors to ask questions about American democracy and correct misinformation about the election.
“It is also important that debate moderators call out falsehoods about the U.S. election that may emerge during the debate,” the group wrote in the letter, obtained by The Washington Post. “We urge you to ask serious questions about how the candidates stand on the threats facing U.S. democracy and encourage them to clearly state their positions on issues related to the integrity of the U.S. election.”
When asked about the difficulties of moderating an event with Trump, Chalian declined to elaborate. But he said a presidential debate is “not the ideal place” for a live fact-check. Rather, the moderators’ goal is to facilitate a conversation between the two candidates, he said.
However, if a blatant untruth comes to light, Jake and Dana are certainly able to quickly set the record straight and get back to business,” he added.
CNN did not make Tapper and Bash available for interviews.
“They’re serious people. They know the issues,” Page said. “They’ve covered politics and moderated debates, so I think they’ll be great.”
CNN knows only too well how difficult it can be to have a fact-based and objective conversation with the former president.
In May 2023, Trump not only admitted to election denial, but also mocked CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins at a town hall event that outraged the network’s employees and contributed to the ouster of the network’s CEO, Chris Licht.
That night, Trump played to an audience that seemed heavily Republican. This time, he will speak to an empty room, which Lukasiewicz said will force the candidates to be more factual and less stagey in their answers.
“Laugh lines don’t work if no one is laughing,” he said.
Either way, the debate is sure to boost CNN’s ratings — the network struggled to reach the audience it attracted during the Trump administration’s news boom. But CNN agreed to allow other networks to air its feed of the event, meaning Thursday’s potentially huge audience — 73.1 million people watched the first debate of 2020 — will be split between networks like NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News and MSNBC.
This is a concession to the old way of doing things. Since 1987, all presidential and vice presidential debates have been hosted and organized by the nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates, which shared the broadcast stream with all news networks – until this year, when both campaign teams decided to bypass that process and schedule the debates directly with the media companies.
In September, ABC News will host a second Biden-Trump debate. The Biden team has accepted CBS’s invitation to a vice presidential debate, while the Trump team has agreed to participate in a debate hosted by Fox News, but both events have not yet been confirmed.
Lukasiewicz, who produced the debate coverage for NBC, said the CNN debate, if successful, could become a model for future debates.
Television networks, he said, have more leeway than the tradition-bound Commission on Presidential Debates to create engaging programs. In particular, he predicted that CNN’s moderators will have more freedom to criticize the candidates than previous debate moderators.
Before the debates were announced on CNN and ABC last month, there was great skepticism about whether Biden and Trump would even debate.
Page said: “Regardless of the flaws and regardless of what people say afterward, I’m really glad it’s happening.”
She had only two words of advice for CNN’s co-hosts: “Good luck.”
“They will do their best,” she said. “That is our request.”
