How to Fact-Check Presidential Debates

this was one of the most inaccurate debates I've ever fact checked a current president set to go head-to-head with a former president something this country has never seen before the idea that anything he said is true I've never seen anybody lie like this guy fact checking is just an important part of Journalism at this point I'm Jane Tim I'm a senior reporter at NBC News and I do all the factchecking for NBC what more are you learning about this Jane I'm the one person who is sitting there evaluating everything I hear for accuracy I listen to every single thing that's said and identify the claims that we think we can add the most value to that there's something that's so profoundly wrong or something that's surprisingly accurate those are the claims that we will dig into and we try and do it as quickly as possible the stage is set for the most significant night of the 2024 campaign so far preparing to fact check a debate is it's sort of like preparing to run like a marathon we're not doing all the work in the moment we're doing a lot of prep I will sit down and watch a million speeches what's the message they're trying to get across to their voters tonight is one of the first really big chances to shake up this race we do a lot of preparing in terms of lots of food lots of caffeine we like to freeze Sour Patch Kids official candy of NBC fact checking we get our desk ready and then sort of like the theater the lights go down tonight NBC News special coverage and we are laser focused until we get to the end of the debate let's go President Biden versus former president Trump in the most important night of the election yet these nights are are really intense and you get into this weird Zone it's like nothing I've ever experienced where it's sort of I don't remember actually factchecking I'm so focused on like getting through it that I kind of feel like I wake up at the end of it they said he was the worst in all of American history that's a fact we had an intern Eliana green she was doing transcribing for me Elana yeah I get that first bit from bleach in the arm to there's more to be done and she would put that into document so I could move it more quickly and work on the content true or false true false mostly false mostly true half true Adam Edelman he's a fantastic reporter who covers all kinds of topics I sometimes joke he's a Swiss army knife and he often will help with factchecking because he's covered so many of these topics as well you have just said it to me and I'll take a look I also worked with a bunch of different reporters across the network who were online a lot of this is checking the primary sources checking the data points we can't fact check everything not anymore because there's just so many things that are false these days I made a catch and release in Mexico not catch and release here every single time he talks about immigration says that he ended Catch and Release and he didn't and I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the the the total initiative relative to what we going do with more border patrol and more Asylum officers when you're factchecking a debate you're not processing the debate you're not listening to what people are saying you're listening to the facts and trying to evaluate them for accuracy as quickly as possible I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence I don't think he knows what he said either it was apparent that that this was a very different kind of debate than anything I had covered with Joe Biden in the past with President Joe Biden we got it down to 15 excuse me $35 for inel instead of $400 he was making a lot of Errors flubbing data points just getting the numbers wrong saying 30% instead of 3 you know big huge data shifts you're in a circumstance where 400,000 people 4 I mean 40 million people usually Donald Trump is the one who likes to to bend facts I'm the one that got the insulin down for the seniors everything was a mess and it was so false that it was both sides were just I think we called it a tsunami of falsity nothing described it better than that my job is to help educate the readers my job's not to tell somebody how to vote my job's not to try and affect change my job is just simply to say here's what was said and here's whether it's correct or based in fact fact checkings become such an important part of Journalism it's more important to be right than to be first it's an enormous amount of pressure but the best thing about journalism is that tomorrow's a brand new day and you're going to start it all over again Jane Tim thank you so very much really appreciate that clarification this is just the best job in the L