Associated Press media reporter David Bauder reported on Friday that CBS News “says it will be up to the politicians — not the moderators — to check the facts of their opponents.” That would be a shocking contrast to ABC.

Angie Drobnic Holan, the former PolitiFact boss now overseeing Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network, complained to Bauder:

“I’ll be interested in seeing how this works in practice,” she said. “Having said that, you’re basically off-loading one of your journalistic responsibilities onto the candidates themselves, so I don’t think that it’s ideal. It takes journalistic courage to be willing to fact-check the candidates, because the candidates are absolutely going to complain about it. I don’t think the moderators’ first goal is to avoid controversy.”

Or we could joke, moderator fact-checking is the Democrats offloading their political responsibilities onto journalists. To compare CNN's approach with ABC's approach this year, it clearly takes more "journalistic courage" to resist the Republican-bashing urges of the media mob. 

Here's one big reason to distrust "independent fact-checkers" like PolitiFact during and after Tuesday's vice-presidential debate. Like their fellow Democrats, they're going to tilt against Vance as the obvious mangler of facts, and unload their 'fact checking" on him. 

Gov. Tim Walz was elected to the House in 2006, and never drew a PolitiFact check until August 7, 2024, after Harris picked Walz as her running mate. In six fact checks, he was ruled as "True" once, "Half True" twice, and "Mostly False" or "False" three times.

None of those were about fact-mangling his own biography. They fact-checked Vance on Walz's lies.They also fact-checked Vance for getting Walz's record wrong on "gender-affirming care."

J.D. Vance was first fact-checked on February 20, 2018, before he ran for anything. Overall now, he has one "True" (the first check), one "Mostly True," two "Half True," and 16 on the False side, including three "Pants On Fire" rulings.

So that's six checks for Walz, three on the False side (50 percent), and 20 checks for Vance, 16 on the False side (80 percent). Or just note the False checks are 16 to 3.The "Pants on Fire" count is 3-zip.