http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/arts/television/vice-presidential-debate-how-do-you-fact-check-a-headshake.html 2016-10-05 16:13:27 Vice Presidential Debate: How Do You Fact-Check a Headshake? Our chief television critic and our media columnist discuss how the debate played on the screen. === On Tuesday night, the vice presidential nominees Senator Tim Kaine and Gov. Mike Pence held their only debate of the 2016 campaign, moderated by Elaine Quijano of CBS. Our chief television critic, James Poniewozik, and our media columnist, Jim Rutenberg, caught up with each other on Wednesday morning to discuss how the bottom-of-the-ticket debate played onscreen. James Poniewozik But fact-checking, and the lack thereof, felt like a bigger issue Tuesday, particularly when Mr. Kaine and Mr. Pence clashed over quotes Mr. Kaine attributed to his opponents. There was a lot of cross-talk — who knew America’s Dad, Tim Kaine, was so feisty? — and Ms. Quijano had a hard time keeping the candidates on-topic, much less correcting anyone. (“Senator Kaine, Governor Pence, please!” she chided at one point.) Another thing that struck me was how often Mr. Pence simply chose to ignore Mr. Kaine’s slams against Mr. Trump’s controversial comments — his go-to move was, instead, to ruefully shake his head in the split screen. That’s not technically a “statement,” but on TV, body language can be more powerful than words. A shake of the head, to the lay viewer, says, “That’s silly, he never said that” — says it, possibly, more powerfully than a spoken denial. So my first questions are: Did you think Ms. Quijano got steamrolled? Is it fair to expect a moderator to be able to fact-check documented statements in real time? And how do you fact-check a head shake? Jim Rutenberg After the split screen made short work of Mr. Trump in the first debate, simply turning him into As for Ms. Quijano, I think at times she did, actually, get steamrolled. For instance, after Mr. Kaine asserted that Mr. Trump wanted to use a “deportation force” to eject all undocumented immigrants, Mr. Pence said, “That’s nonsense.” Of course, Mr. Trump did for a sustained period of time this year advocate for a “deportation force,” though he and his advisers have more recently narrowed its scope. Tuesday night offered a good chance for some better definition. And Ms. Quijano did begin to interject, “Governor, Mr. Trump has said …” But Mr. Pence just talked right over her and she never came back to it. She also, for instance, let Mr. Kaine say Mr. Trump wants to privatize Social Security based on his book of 16 years ago; he has proposed no such thing in this campaign. This debate will, and should, renew the discussion over the moderator’s responsibility to fact-check. They have to do it to a reasonable extent. Poniewozik Several times, Mr. Kaine told viewers they could “go to the tape” and see for themselves that Mr. Trump said something that, in fact, Mr. Trump said. But who has time to go to the tape? You’re already watching a vice presidential debate instead of the baseball playoffs; you’ve got work in the morning. Only the invested (and likely the already decided) are going to do that sort of extra credit. A vice presidential debate is an odd bird to begin with, of course, since the real competitors are not even onstage. But Mr. Trump made himself a presence anyway, as is his wont, by live tweeting the debate. (Mostly, he retweeted followers: “Kaine looks like an evil crook out of the Batman movies,” As for the two candidates actually present, Mr. Kaine attacked often but clumsily, armed with canned zingers like, “You are Donald Trump’s apprentice.” He was the guy who has to yell at his neighbor about playing his stereo too loudly, doesn’t like to do it, and so blusters through it awkwardly. Mr. Pence, the former talk-radio host, was the smoother, more polished presence — but often had a peculiar strategy regarding his running mate: Donald Who? Were these two guys even having the same debate? Rutenberg But that goes to the whole issue people have brought up this year about scoring the debates based on style rather than substance. And there was quite a bit of that going on in Pundit-stan last night. Of course, what matters most is how swing voters score it. Ohio swing voters who participated in Most of the members of a CNN focus group said that Mr. Kaine won despite Mr. Pence’s better demeanor. Before the debate they said they had been looking for “substance” from the candidates. But, as the CNN host Jake Tapper pointed out, the focus group was in Mr. Kaine’s home state of Virginia and may have been inclined to lean his way (which raises the question — um, then why have the focus group there?!). As for the actual substance, again, Mr. Pence did repeatedly deny — either outright or through the shake of his head — quotes Mr. Kaine accurately attributed to Trump, many of which have defined Mr. Trump’s candidacy. His tough talk about Russia and the Russian president Vladimir V. Putin was jarring coming after Mr. Trump’s That brings me to your question of whether they were having the same debate. They had different jobs last night. Mr. Kaine was there to put Mr. Pence on the spot by making him defend Mr. Trump’s more controversial statements and record, which Mr. Pence didn’t really do — either denying they were ever uttered or just choosing not to engage. But Mr. Pence’s job was to present himself as a level-headed grown-up who could assume the presidency either in the next four years, or, as many talking heads speculated last night, in 2020. They both seemed to do what they set out to do. Poniewozik Either way, the debate was not the stuff of “West Wing” political fantasy. Mr. Kaine flailed, Mr. Pence denied and Ms. Quijano jumped from question to question without much productive follow-up. It did have its moments, particularly toward the end, when the two openly religious candidates talked about their faith and abortion. For a few minutes, they laid out their positions on an issue they deeply disagree on, with some measure of introspection. Maybe it was the sort of debate they would prefer to have had; it’s probably the one many folks would prefer to have heard. The first thing people ask after a debate is: Who won? That’s a weird meta question, because people don’t mean the same thing by it. “Won” in this case can mean “was more persuasive on substance,” or “seemed to dominate in style” or “made me more likely to vote for him” or “made me think he made other people more likely to vote for him.” But as we saw last week, a debate is often won or lost — whatever that means — in the days afterward: in the punditry, in late-night satire, in the candidates’ reactions. From my armchair, it looked as if the Clinton campaign loaded up Mr. Kaine with oppo-research grenades in the hope of either getting video clips of Mr. Pence defending Mr. Trump’s controversies (or refusing to) or goading Mr. Trump into a spree like the one he went on against the former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. Rutenberg Poniewozik