It’s debate week. On Tuesday night, presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will square off in a much-anticipated debate hosted by ABC News.

One of the key questions — maybe the question — that always comes up in debates is what kind of role the moderators should play when it comes to fact-checking the candidates.

Moderators are usually pretty good at calling out a candidate when he or she doesn’t directly answer a question. But should a moderator call out a candidate when they say something misleading or flat-out untrue?

Or should the moderator steer clear of fact-checking and leave it up to the candidates to fact-check one another?

In a column for Poynter, my colleague Angie Drobnic Holan made the argument that moderators should fact-check candidates. Holan is the director of the International Fact-Checking Network and, before that, she was the longtime editor-in-chief of PolitiFact.

Holan wrote, “In the high-stakes race for the presidency, many voters are just tuning in and not well-versed in current political messaging. They won’t necessarily know what’s true and what’s false without getting at least a few cues from journalist moderators.”

Tuesday’s debate will be moderated by “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis. The first presidential debate of this election cycle — the one between Trump and Joe Biden in June — was hosted by CNN and, for the most part, was not fact-checked by moderators.

There is always plenty of fact-checking after the debate. During an appearance on CNN on Sunday, Holan, who admits live fact-checking by moderators is no easy task, encouraged viewers to seek out reliable fact-checking sources after it’s over.

But moderators can still do their part in real time. Holan’s column offers smart advice for moderators, such as insisting on direct answers, helping the candidates fact-check each other by getting quick responses from a candidate after their opponent makes a claim, making brief comments to set the record straight, and fact-checking important topics and not trivial ones.

Also, Holan wrote, it’s important for moderators to make sure the debate covers a few topics well instead of many topics poorly.

Holan added, “No debate can be all things to all voters, and journalists make a mistake if they think that more topics are better. Most voters are tuning in to get a sense of the person who is the candidate: How well do they articulate their positions? Do they seem strong or weak in doing so? What is the sense of their character or personality? The facts do matter, very much so, but they are not the only things that matter. Setting up a debate to be substantive and thoughtful is more important than moving through the topics as quickly as possible.”

What to make of the latest poll

So what do we make of the latest poll put out Sunday by The New York Times and Siena College?

It shows Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump just about even, and within the margin of error, in the race for the presidency. Yet it was all seen as a bit disappointing for the Harris camp. The poll shows Trump leading Harris, 48% to 47% (again, that’s within the poll’s three-percentage-point margin of error) and it’s pretty much the same as the Times/Siena poll taken in late July just after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

The New York Times’ Jonathan Weisman and Ruth Igielnik wrote, “Mr. Trump may have had a rough month following the president’s departure and amid the burst of excitement that Ms. Harris brought Democrats, but the poll suggests his support remains remarkably resilient.”

Nate Cohn, The New York Times’ chief political analyst who focuses on polling, wrote, “To me, the result is a bit surprising. It’s the first lead for Mr. Trump in a major nonpartisan national survey in about a month. As a result, it’s worth being at least a little cautious about these findings, as there isn’t much confirmation from other polls.”

Cohn added, “That said, it wouldn’t be hard to explain if Vice President Harris’s support really has faded a bit in recent weeks. After all, she was benefiting from an ideal news environment: an uninterrupted month of glowing coverage from President Biden’s departure from the race in July to the Democratic convention in August. It’s possible she was riding a political sugar high; if so, it would make sense if she came off those highs in the two uneventful weeks since the convention.”

And, well, Cohn points out, “There’s also a plausible reason the Times/Siena poll would be the first to capture a shift back toward Mr. Trump: There simply haven’t been many high-quality surveys fielded since the convention, when Ms. Harris was riding high. There was a scattering of online polls this week, but there hasn’t been a traditional high-quality survey with interviews conducted after Aug. 28.”

So, maybe the latest Times/Siena poll is an outlier? And it should be noted that the election will come down to seven battlefield states where Harris either leads or is tied with Trump — again, all the numbers are within the margin of error.

Ryan Lizza, Rachael Bade and Eugene Daniels of Politico’s Playbook wrote, “Like any single poll, we’ll have to wait to see if it’s validated by other research in the coming days. The debate on Tuesday could also scramble things in some new way, so we don’t want to read too much into (the Sunday) numbers.”

As Cohn wrote, “There’s no way to know whether the Times/Siena poll is too favorable for Mr. Trump. We never know whether the polls are ‘right’ until the votes are counted.”

Supporting the cause

Former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, right, being interviewed by Margaret Brennan on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” (Courtesy: CBS News)

Nikki Haley might not be a fan of Donald Trump the person, but she is supporting him to be Donald Trump the president.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Haley, the former UN Ambassador and South Carolina governor, tried to beat out Trump for the GOP presidential nomination. But now she is fully behind Trump. She said her focus is on “policy.”

In an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Haley was asked by moderator Margaret Brennan if she thought Trump was a “good candidate?”

Haley said, “I think he is the Republican nominee, and I think put him against Kamala Harris, who’s the Democrat nominee … for me, it’s not a question. Now, do I agree with his style? Do I agree with his approach? Do I agree with his communications? No. When I look at the policies and how they affect my family and how I think they’re going to affect the country, that’s where I go back and I look at the differences. I mean, these are the candidates we have been given.”

Prior to that, Haley admitted that she ran at a time when it appeared the nominees were going to be Trump and President Joe Biden. Haley told Brennan, “I’ve always said, look, if I thought Biden or Trump were great candidates, I wouldn’t have run for president. I ran because I thought I could do a better job.”

As far as campaigning for Trump, Haley said she is on “standby,” but has not been asked by the Trump campaign to either campaign for Trump or help him prep for Tuesday night’s debate against Harris.

Haley said, “He can, you know, whatever he decides to do with his campaign, he can do that. But when I called him back in June, I told him I was supportive. I think the teams have talked to each other a little bit, but there hasn’t been an ask as of yet. But you know, should he ask, I’m happy to be helpful.”

Meanwhile, longtime Democratic strategist James Carville blasted Haley on Jen Psaki’s MSNBC show Sunday morning. After praising Republicans Dick and Liz Cheney for endorsing Harris, Carville said of Haley, “Does that woman have any courage at all? Because if she does, it’s not particularly evident to anybody. I don’t know if she’s more spineless than gutless, but one of the two certainly applies to her.”

Media tidbits

• Politico’s Catherine Kim interviews Pekka Kallioniemi — a Finnish disinformation scholar and author of the upcoming book “Vatnik Soup,” a book on Russia’s information wars — in “Why the Kremlin Loves Social Media.”
• While all the attention in the NFL broadcasting world this past weekend was on Fox Sports’ Tom Brady, The Athletic’s Zak Keefer writes about the ESPN “Monday Night Football” announcer in “Troy Aikman ‘never lost at anything.’ He’s just now starting to enjoy it.”
• Speaking of Brady, his NFL broadcasting debut on Sunday had mixed (although mostly negative) reviews on social media even if some thought that after a rough start, he got better as the game went along. I’m still hesitant to judge him too harshly after just one game, but I’ll have more thoughts and reviews in Tuesday’s newsletter.
• Kendrick Lamar, the 17-time Grammy and 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner, will be the halftime act for Super Bowl LIX, which will take place next Feb. 9 in New Orleans. It’s Lamar’s first time as the Super Bowl headliner, but he did perform at halftime along with Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige and 50 Cent in 2022. In a statement, Lamar said, “Rap music is still the most impactful genre to date. And I’ll be there to remind the world why. They got the right one.”
• For Poynter’s PolitiFact, Sofia Ahmed with “No, Kamala Harris did not say she will shut down X if elected.”
• Catching up on this from a couple of weeks ago. In a special for USA Today, David Colton, a former executive editor at USA Today, writes, “Legendary USA TODAY editor Bob Dubill dies: ‘He made every newsroom better.’”

Hot type

• Cool project here. The Washington Post’s director of photography Robert Miller spent the summer capturing moments of love and connection in the D.C. region. Along with reporter Joe Heim, it’s Miller with “A Summer of Love.”
• For “CBS News Sunday Mornings,” correspondent Tracy Smith with “A political playlist: The fight over campaign songs.”
• The Washington Post’s Rachel Tashjian and Maura Judkis with “Anna Wintour kicks off Fashion Week with Jill Biden.”

More resources for journalists

• Lead With Influence is for leaders who manage big responsibilities but have no direct reports. Closes Friday!
• Check out our dynamic, in-person workshop for new newsroom managers.
• Try our free Grant Writing for Journalists self-directed course.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.

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