ABC Debate Misinformation Muzzled with Democrat Spin

If Los Angeles Times television reporter Stephen Battaglio is not a paid publicist for ABC News then he is cheating the network out of a salary.

Battaglio’s slobbering profile of ABC News journalist Linsey Davis, who co-anchored the presidential debate with David Muir earlier this month, could just as well have been written by an in house ABC News publicist.

Battaglio fawned over Davis and almost completely ignored all the criticism she and David Muir faced for only fact checking Donald Trump but not Kamala Harris even though she made a number of demonstrably false statements about Trump. And to call what Davis did to Trump “fact checking” is a bit of misnomer. It implies objectivity. She was really debating him and offering up her own opinions.

The Los Angeles Times article should have confronted all of this criticism of Davis for stacking the decks against Trump. Instead Battaglio made it sound like no serious blowback existed. Battaglio wrote an entire 1,508 word profile of Davis without explicitly mentioning the stark fact that she repeatedly challenged Donald Trump’s statement but allowed multiple falsehoods peddled by Kamala Harris to go unchallenged.

Additionally, Battaglio depicted Davis’s signature “fact check” of Trump as the height of objectivity when she was actually offered up a mendacious statement intended to obscure Trump’s point that Democrats support abortion on demand up through the ninth month and even have an insouciant attitude towards the prospect of disposing of babies after birth.

The triumphant article was titled “Linsey Davis held Trump’s feet to the fire.”

But what about Harris?

Battaglio left out all the reasons Davis should have been challenging Harris on her falsehoods. Readers were given the misimpression that nothing Harris said merited any objections from the moderators.

Battaglio, who interviewed Davis in Philadelphia the day after the debate, wrote that “With co-moderator David Muir, Davis had studied hours of campaign rallies and interviews to prepare for the most anticipated event at Philadelphia’s National Convention Center, and were ready to counter the candidates most egregious statements.”

That didn’t happen. Although you wouldn’t know it from the Los Angeles Times article Davis and Muir challenged or “fact checked” Trump five times but did not challenge a single mistruth from Harris.

And Harris unleashed quite a few whoppers.

The day after the debate the New York Post editorial page published a list of five false statements made during her face-off with Trump and how they should have been fact checked.

Some examples from the Post:

–Kamala claim: “Let’s remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing antisemitic hate, and what did the president then at the time say? There were fine people on each side.”

–Fact check: Harris, along with Biden, always leaves out what Trump said next: “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.” Snopes has labeled “false” the idea that Trump praised neo-Nazis.

–Kamala claim: “What you’re going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again.”

–Fact check: The Heritage Foundation, an independent think tank, produced Project 2025, not the Trump campaign. Trump has repeatedly said he wasn’t involved in its writing, does not believe in its policies and won’t implement it.

–Kamala claim: “Let’s remember, this is the same individual who took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of five young black and Latino boys who were innocent, the Central Park Five. Took out a full-page ad calling for their execution.”

–Fact check: Trump’s 1989 advertisement did not call for the execution of the Central Park Five. He talked about a woman raped in the park, but did not mention the names of suspects or who they were. Titled “Bring Back the Death Penalty. Bring Back the Police,” Trump simply bemoaned how generally unsafe New York City had become, and that criminals needed to be held accountable. His cri de cœur preceded what would become a general backlash against disorder in Gotham that led to the election of Rudy Giuliani as mayor and more proactive policing.

Additionally, Kamala claimed that Trump promised a ”bloodbath” if he is not elected when the plain reality–as noted by apparently everyone but David Muir and Linsey Davis–is that he was using the term to refer to the economic calamities that would befall the auto industry if Kamala wins the election.

But in his profile of Davis Battaglio wrote around–or obscured–the specific criticism she faced. He depicted it as just partisan carping that any objective objective newsman or newswoman faces

“The critiques of her and Muir’s approach predictably fell along partisan lines. Harris supporters cheered it, while Trump’s acolytes on Fox News and other conservative outlets said the duo was piling on the former president and letting his Democratic opponent off easy.”

But off easy for what exactly?

Battaglio does not say. He just leaves readers in the dark over the egregious reality that Davis did not challenge even a single multitude of falsehoods that Harris uttered.  Without specifying the criticism he makes it sound like predictable partisan carping.

And by the way, the criticism has not, as he glibly wrote, fallen only “along partisan lines.”

Some of the sharpest criticism came from two people with close ties to the Democratic party: Mark Penn, a former advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton,  and Andrew Stein, a veteran Democratic party New York City luminary who served as Manhattan Borough President in the 1970s and 1980s.

Two days after the debate Stein and Penn wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal titled “ABC’s Bias Deprived Voters of a Fair Debate.”

“Debate moderators must check their biases and seek to be scrupulously fair, or they shouldn’t do the job. They should observe strict rules and come from a variety of networks,” they argued.  “Most important, they shouldn’t interfere but rather trust voters to make their own decisions. ABC undermined the system for everyone.”

Battaglio, for his part, started off his article by breathlessly turning Linsey Davis’s most nakedly mendacious moments of the debate into a triumph of objectivity.  He recounted how Davis challenged Trump when he talked about how former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam said parents would decide what to do with a baby born after birth due to a failed abortion, suggesting they might opt to kill it off anyway.

“Presidential debates are remembered for the candidates pithy oneliners. But in the chaotic political landscape of 2024, a simple statement of fact served as the showstopper [during the] show down between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris,” he wrote.

“There is no state in the county where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born,” said ABC News moderator Linsey Davis in the matter-of-fact style familiar to viewers” who watch her. “Her correction was a response to Trump’s claim that the Democratic Party’s support of abortion rights includes ‘executing” an infant after it’s born, something he has repeatedly said on the campaign trail. In an era in which misinformation spreads fast and furious, Davis’ real-time fact check cut through the proceedings like a sharp blade.”

But it was actually Davis spreading misinformation with Democratic spin that Battaglio cast as an objective fact check.

There are a multitude of documented cases of babies being born alive after botched abortions and left to expire in Democratic controlled states.  Kamala Harris, as California Senator, even voted against the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act that would have mandated care for babies born after a botched abortion.

As conservative leaning journalist John Solomon wrote on Twitter, ABC News “owes voters a correction. Its moderator claimed there’s nowhere where a baby born live from a botched abortion can be killed, In Minnesota, home to Harris’ veep nominee, eight babies born alive were allowed to die without lifesaving care.”

In an article for his Just The News website on the subject, Solomon explained that in Minnesota where Harris running mate Tim Walz is governor “and on his watch, five infants were “born alive” in 2021 during failed abortions, and none was provided life-saving care though two got “comfort care,” the Minnesota Department of Health reported on July 1, 2022.

“Three other infants were “born alive” during abortions in 2019, Walz’s first year as governor, and they too perished without life-saving care, according to a July 1, 2020, report from the same state agency.”

Any honest objective journalists would have grappled with these stark facts when evaluating Davis’s take on the matter. Instead, Battaglio took her words on the highly contested issue of abortion at face value. That is disheartening and sloppy and does a disservice to readers.

Journalists are supposed to treat anybody they interview with a measure of skepticism. Instead, in the entire article Battaglio proved himself to be a stenographer and cheerleader for Linsey Davis.

Battaglio did not answer his phone and did not respond to an emailed request for comment.