What we learned fact-checking the first debate
Two things are true. Dr. Anthony Fauci did say that President Trump’s early virus actions, like travel restrictions, saved lives. But other experts have criticized the president for not having a national testing strategy and downplaying the virus’ severity.
These are just two of the more than 500 facts drawn from our reporting over the past months we had ready to go for the first presidential debate Tuesday night.
Many organizations were fact-checking the debate. USA TODAY did it in real time, on the same screen as the video, so you could get the full picture instantly. More than 35 journalists across the USA TODAY Network watched the debate (virtually) together to add and surface the fact-checks as the debate sped by.
“‘Universal’ mail-voting, slammed by Trump in which mail-ballots are mailed to all registered voters unsolicited, is taking place in nine states. Only one, Nevada, is considered a battleground,” wrote national political reporter Joey Garrison when Trump said the election could be compromised over mail-in balloting.
Reporter Erin Richards added: “Several states have voted entirely by mail for as many as 20 years with fraud cases being an extreme rarity, and states have protections in place to ward against election fraud.”
When talk turned to Joe Biden and his record on race, civil and voting rights reporter Deborah Barfield Berry offered: “Joe Biden apologized for comments about Black voters who might support President Trump. He said he would not take the African American community for granted.”
In a debate where you often couldn’t hear as candidates talked over each other, or devolved into name-calling, we provided consistent, important information at the bottom of the screen. (We also provided a full transcript.) We displayed about one fact per minute, about 85 over the course of the 90minute debate. And viewers valued the approach. We had more than 2 million streams of our fact-check video on USA TODAY and social channels throughout our network.
While we had hundreds of fact-checks prepared for just about any comment Tuesday night, elections editor Annah Aschbrenner prioritized two topics: the coronavirus and voting.
“One affects whether people live or die and the other is a fundamental right,” she said. “We want our elected officials to be honest with us about the biggest issues of the day.
“It’s important for people to know what their leaders think and what their leaders are saying. And it’s also important that they know whether or not that’s true.”
For example, Trump and Biden argued over whether the president’s campaign rallies helped spread the coronavirus. Trump said, “We’ve had no negative effect, and we’ve had 35, 40,000 people at these rallies.”
That is not true, reported Katie Wadington and Matthew Brown.
“His first campaign rally after the pandemic started was in June in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” they wrote. “Tulsa’s top health official said that event was ‘likely’ a contributing factor in an ensuing surge of cases in the city.”
Often, there is a kernel of truth in a statement, but overall it is incorrect, Aschbrenner said.
During the debate, Trump said: “Did you see what’s going on, take a look at West Virginia, mail-in ballots. They’re being sold. They’re being dumped in rivers. This is a horrible thing for our country.”
Aschbrenner said: “Now in reality, someone in West Virginia pleaded guilty to mail fraud for changing the political affiliation on a handful of absentee ballot applications, not ballots, but applications. So yes, something happened in West Virginia related to election fraud, but it wasn’t a mail person selling them or someone dumping bags of ballots in rivers. It was much smaller than that.”
She said this a sophisticated approach at spreading misinformation “because it sounds reasonable, but maybe not the entire packaging of the fact is true.”
We followed that fact-check in the moment Tuesday with a front-page story Thursday. The headline: “Trump misleads on mail voting.”
If you’re going to call something a “fact,” you’ve got to be 100% right. Kristen DelGuzzi, USA TODAY managing editor for politics, explains what our journalists go through to verify the information they report.
We talk to primary, not secondary sources. We review, and often link to, original transcripts or documents. We vet information with scientists, economists and other experts. Our reporters have extensive experience in the areas they cover.
When we know something is wrong, we work to get that context in the headline itself, knowing that is all some news skimmers will see. We edit social posts that way as well. We won’t let bad information from a candidate go unchecked; we’ll put the truth in the same post as the claim.
“We’re trying to do what we can every day to bring truth to all the claims that we’re hearing throughout this whole process,” DelGuzzi said. “We’re also trying to step back every day and do biggerpicture stories that really illuminate the issue.” Especially those that become major campaign themes, like crime and “law and order.”
During the debate Tuesday, Trump singled out cities such as Chicago and New York over rising crime.
“The people of this country want and demand law and order ... and you won’t even say the phrase,” Trump said, adding that if Biden were elected, “the suburbs would be gone.”
Justice reporters Kristine Phillips and Kevin Johnson took a look. They found that some cities did have a rise in crime over the summer, but “according to crime data the FBI released this week, the violent crime rate in the country has dropped steadily from 2000 to 2019. Although some cities have seen upticks in homicides and violent crimes in the past few years and months, those numbers remain far below 1990s levels.”
They quoted Richard Rosenfeld, a criminal justice professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who said: “Many cities experienced crime increases this summer, violent crimes specifically.
But none of those cities is awash in crime, if that means historically high crime rates or crime that is washing over the entire population.
“That is simply not true.”
This is detailed work. We may go through hundreds of documents to verify one number.
This is treacherous work. Our reporters are routinely threatened by people who don’t like what they reveal.
And this is critical work. Our job is to spread truth, which is never more important than when lives and rights are on the line.