Bias •
September 11th, 2024
How ABC’s Debate Moderators Showed Bias
Michael Le Brecht II/ABC NEWS
Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump met for the first time this week in a 90-minute debate hosted by ABC News (digital news rated Lean Left).
Minutes in, the moderators showed bias against Trump, primarily by fact checking him and not Harris, even though both made false claims. It is possible Trump made more false claims than Harris overall — CNN (Lean Left bias) counted 33 false claims from Trump and one false claim from Harris, while Ryan Saavedra (Not Rated) of the Daily Wire (Right bias) counted 16 false claims from Harris and 14 from Trump — but it’s still notable that the moderators never fact checked Harris.
In addition, some topics were not broached at all, such as the assassination attempt on Trump, showing bias by omission. Though, Trump did have about five minutes more speaking time during the debate.
Note: After the debate, ABC began publishing fact checks of some of Harris' claims.
Related: We Asked Over 1,000 Americans to Rate ABC’s Bias
ABC Moderators Fact Checked Trump More Often During Debate
During the debate, moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir provided some fact checking, but only on comments from Trump, not Harris:
- Linsey Davis fact checked Trump on abortion: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born,” after Trump stated, “But her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth, it's execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born, is okay. And that's not okay with me.”
- David Muir fact checked Trump on Haitian immigration in Springfield, Ohio: “I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
- When Trump said “Crime in this country is through the roof.” Muir said, “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”
- Muir fact checked Trump on the election. Trump said on “The Lex Fridman Podcast” last week that he “lost by a whisker.” During the debate, when asked about the comment, Trump said he was being sarcastic. Muir said, “I did watch all of these pieces of video. I didn't detect the sarcasm, lost by a whisker, we didn't quite make it, and we should just point out as clarification, and you know this, you and your allies, 60 cases in front of many judges. Many of them — and said there was no widespread fraud.”
At no point did the moderators fact check Harris, though they did sometimes appear to agree on one of Trump’s points and then ask Harris to respond. For example, Muir at one point said, “Vice President Harris I do want to ask for your response and you heard what the president said there because the Biden administration did keep a number of the Trump tariffs in place so how do you respond?"
Here are some comments from Harris that were false or needed context, but the debate moderators did not check:
- Harris said Trump would implement “a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025” if elected. Trump is not directly tied to Project 2025, has repeatedly said he has not read it, and has said he likes some of the ideas in it and dislikes others. Trump’s platform is called Agenda 47.
- “Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression,” Harris said. The unemployment rate at the end of Trump’s term was 6.4%. In May 2020, the unemployment rate was 14.7%, the worst since the Great Depression, mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but by the time Trump left office, it had already begun to rebound.
- Harris claimed that her administration created 800,000 manufacturing jobs while Trump's administration lost jobs in that industry. Those numbers need context: many jobs lost in the early days of the pandemic (under Trump) were refilled later (under Biden-Harris).
- Harris: “Donald Trump the candidate has said in this election there will be a bloodbath, if this -- and the outcome of this election is not to his liking.” Trump said that the auto industry would experience a "bloodbath" if Biden was reelected (this was said before Harris was the candidate).
Examining Bias in ABC’s Questions
Some of the questions moderators asked revealed their bias via slant. In addition, some questions were not asked at all, showing bias by omission — moderators did not ask about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life, for instance.
In an example of a slanted question, Muir asked Trump, “Why do you believe it's appropriate to weigh in on the racial identity of your opponent?” The framing of the question already implies disapproval on the part of the moderators. Rather than asking about the content of Trump’s policies or comments, asking why the comments were appropriate intentionally forces Trump to answer a loaded question to which there is no good answer. Either he must say his comment was inappropriate, or say, “It is justified to comment on the racial identity of my opponent.” The question misses Trump’s original point about Harris purportedly changing her stated identity and using her ethnicity for political gain.
There were many questions that viewers, including those on the AllSides team, were surprised were not asked nor touched on, including the assassination attempt on Trump.
While moderators asked Trump about his purported involvement in Jan. 6, moderators did not ask Harris about posting about the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which was used to bail out protesters and rioters in Minneapolis in the wake of George Floyd’s death, and which Harris has been criticized for.
The right tends to view the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots as equally or more destructive than Jan. 6 and also informing Jan. 6; one critique of Harris’ running mate is that he allowed the rioting in his time as governor of Minnesota. Moderators would have been more balanced to ask both about Jan. 6 and the summer of 2020 leading up to it.
A timeline of the questions asked:
- Both candidates were asked about the economy
- Both were asked about abortion
- Both were asked about immigration
- Harris was asked about her position changes on fracking, mandatory government buyback programs for certain weapons, and decriminalizing border crossings
- Trump was asked about Jan. 6 and the 2020 election
- Trump was asked a second question about whether he believes he lost the 2020 election.
- Harris was asked, “He still believes he did not lose the election…Is [suppressing the vote] what you believe he's trying to do here?”
- Harris was asked about how she would end the war in Gaza
- Both were asked about Ukraine
- Harris was asked about her role in the Afghanistan withdrawal
- Trump was asked about his healthcare plan
- Both were asked about climate change
- Closing statements for each
Overall, Trump spoke for 42 minutes and 57 seconds. Harris spoke for 37 minutes and 36 seconds. The moderators did cut off Trump more often, presumably because Harris stayed within her time constraints.
Read the transcript here.
ABC Rated Lean Left by Over 1,000 Americans
AllSides conducted an extensive media bias analysis of ABC’s digital news in the months and weeks leading up to the debate, July through Sept. 2024.
In total, nearly 1,100 Americans across the political spectrum rated the bias of ABC News; an expert panel also assessed its bias. The final rating for ABC News was Lean Left (-1.42 on the AllSides Media Bias Meter).
Debate Moderators Must Show Balance
ABC’s moderators did ask each candidate a number of substantive questions. Whether those questions were too easy on either candidate is for you to decide.
However, ABC moderators fact checked Trump when he made false statements, but didn’t do the same for Harris. Either there should be no live fact checking during a debate, or moderators should fact check both candidates in a balanced manner, which was not demonstrated by ABC in this case.
Written by Clare Ashcraft, Bridging Coordinator & Media Analyst (Center bias).
Reviewed by Evan Wagner, News Analyst & Product Manager (Lean Left bias), Julie Mastrine, Director of Marketing and Media Bias Ratings (Lean Right bias), and Henry Brechter, Editor-in-Chief (Center bias).
