2016 US Presidential Debate Moderators, Dates and Locations Announced
CNN Money reports that this year's three presidential debates between Clinton and Trump will be moderated by NBC's Lester Holt, CNN's Anderson Cooper and ABC's Martha Raddatz, and Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace. The vice presidential debate moderator is Elaine Quijano of CBS News.
Holt, the anchor of the NBC Nightly News, will spearhead the first debate, which will take place at Hofstra University on the 26th of September.
Cooper and Raddatz will co-moderate the second debate which will be in a town-hall style event in St. Louis, Missouri.
Wallace will moderate the third and final presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nevada.
According to CNN Money, "the role of presidential debate moderator is among one of the most coveted assignments in political journalism, especially in this cycle when interest in the debates is likely to reach an all-time high."
The Commission on Presidential Debates had originally planned to announce the name of moderators around late August, but decided to do it instead in September.
The delay was partly due to Trump's unprecedented and unheard of challenge to the bipartisan commission that it was implicitly supporting Clinton. The commission took time to select individuals who are immune or at least as immune as possible of accusations of bias.
The commission wanted candidates who were-- in addition to being qualified and capable of moderating a debate -- have a sterling reputation for being fair and balanced and have no past record of controversy with either Clinton and Trump.
"The job description is to be both a journalist, a moderator, and a circus navigator, I think. The job involves doing many things, which is why this is so difficult," former CNN Washington bureau chief Frank Sesno said on "Smerconish" last week.
"They have got to not be intimidated by cameras and knowing that maybe a billion people around the world are watching this thing. So there's a great deal of pressure and a great deal of sort of real-time thinking that goes into this job. Not everybody can do it," Sesno said. "Very few can, really."
The Commission wants the avoid the possible scenario of the moderator getting dragged into the debate, which Trump was prone to do.
Trump has been known to have irrational attacks on the media accusing them of unfair treatment
"This made the Commission even more cautious than usual in researching potential moderators, sources said. The Commission feared that Trump would use even the slightest whiff of a pro-Clinton bias to attack a moderator and undermine his or her credibility. Their efforts were complicated by the fact that Clinton has been a public figure for 30 years and has developed a unique relationships with certain journalists," CNN Money said.
