Call me an old-school fuddy-duddy.
Lester Holt of NBC News has a big task ahead of him Monday night. He gets to moderate the joint appearance between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican nominee Donald J. Trump.
I liken his role to that of an athletic event referee. The best officiating jobs are done by those you don’t notice.
Accordingly, some of the chatter leading up to the event has been whether the moderator should correct candidates’ misstatements.
I’ve thought about this for about the past four years and I’ve concluded that Holt should not interfere. He should not interject himself into the storyline. He shouldn’t become part of the story … as CNN’s Candy Crowley did in 2012 when she corrected a statement that Mitt Romney made about whether President Obama had declared the fire fight at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya to be a terrorist attack.
That wasn’t Crowley’s job.
Her job then — and Holt’s will be Monday — was to ask questions of the candidates and to let them correct each other if and when the need arose.
If the moderators were to correct the candidates, then how do they determine which misstatements they let pass and which ones do they correct?
I prefer that they not make the call.
Of course, given the nature of social media these days, a non-call also would become “news.” Commentators no doubt would make them have to answer for their decision to let the candidates’ statements go unchallenged.
Sigh …
Still, my old-school tendency leads me to believe the moderator’s job isn’t to become a fact-checker. It is to be a referee. The best refs are those we don’t notice during a competitive event.
