[ceor4]

People are going to want to watch the debates live for the same reason people want to watch sports live. You can argue all you want for why a post-processed sports game is going to be so much better, but the truth is that's not what people want.

And the sort of people who are going to want to read a fact-checked version of the debate are in the tiny minority and likely well-informed enough that they have completely made up their minds well and truly before the debate.

I do however think that fact checking is an absolutely great idea, it just needs to be done live. There could be a fact checking team which can interrupt candidates with objections, or ring a "pants on fire" bell, or something entertaining.

[jal278]

The difference between sports and debates are that the post-processing in sports isn't going to change the most important "outcome," i.e. who won.

But post-processing when it comes to debates can mean overlaying information on top of the video that identifies clear falsehoods -- undermining a candidate's ability to play fast and loose with the truth to win, knowing that there's no real penalty for doing so.

So the "winner" might emerge differently if for example, news agencies didn't publish the live video, but each agency did independent fact checking (if the video were under embargo) and then each published annotated and unannotated versions.

You could still watch the vanilla version if you wanted to, but at least there would be widespread access to factually vetted versions as well.