Why CBS News will take center stage during the VP debate

Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will engage in repeated remarks and innuendos during Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, but CBS News — and its top anchors — will be in the hot seat.

Tuesday’s debate at 9 p.m., broadcast from the iconic CBS Broadcast Center in midtown Manhattan, will be the network’s highest-profile — and most visible — test of journalism since its lauded interview with Pope Francis in May.

But a lot has changed for the network since then. For one thing, new owners are on the way, and the moderators moderating the debate offer competing visions for the network’s future. One is a rising star in news coverage, while the other appears to be on the way out.

The debate will be co-moderated by CBS Evening News Presenter Norah O’Donnell, 50, and Face the nation Presenter Margaret Brennan, 44. Loud The New York Times, It is monitored by Brennan’s Face the nation producer Mary Hager, who serves as the organization’s executive editor for politics, and David Reiter, senior vice president of CBS News in charge of events.

The 90-minute event comes less than two months after billionaire David Ellison’s Skydance completed its months-long search to buy Paramount Global, the organization’s parent company, and after the company completed two rounds of job cuts, including CBS News was not spared. The past eight months have seen the departures of reporters like reporter Catherine Herridge and anchor Jeff Glor, and a third round of cuts at the end of the year could leave the home of journalists like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow even more understaffed pressure comes.

TJ Kirkpatrick/CBS via Getty Images

This chaos can even be visible on the screen. O’Donnell, one of the debate moderators, was demoted in August after her evening news show never managed to climb out of third place. (She is one too 60 minutes contributing correspondent.)

The network touted the move as a new opportunity for O’Donnell, who will focus on big interviews after the election (such as her vaunted meetings with Francis and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson). But it was obvious what the move meant for O’Donnell, especially after the network replaced her with a group of men.

It also stands in stark contrast to Brennan, CBS News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent, who leads Sunday’s news Face the nation every week. It’s Brennan’s producer who helps set up the debate, and the split screen between the moderators – who are said to have a tenuous relationship – indicates who CBS is prioritizing. Whatever the case, the debate is also the only debate so far this cycle – and possibly ever – moderated entirely by women.

Josh Huskin/CBS via Getty Images

Brennan, known for her pithy interview style, has already managed to rile people like MAGA with her interview with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem after Noem admitted in her memoir to killing her dog Chester . She also conducted a separate, similarly controversial interview with Vance earlier this month after he and former President Donald Trump alleged that Haitian migrants were killing pets in Springfield, Ohio.

But Tuesday’s debate is not an interview with Vance or Walz, as the network has tried to make clear. “The aim of the debate is to facilitate a good debate between the candidates, and the moderators will give them the opportunity to check each other in real time,” said Claudia Milne, the network’s head of standards and practices Just on Monday.

To that end, the network will deploy a team of about 20 reporters to fact-check the two candidates in real time. But viewers — and only CBS viewers — can only see these fact checks by scanning a QR code on their screen that directs them to the CBS News website.

It’s a split-the-baby decision that sets the network apart from the debates run by CNN (which offered no fact-checking) and ABC (which only fact-checked Trump, drawing the former president’s ire). The idea, Milne told the Just, is to offer the audience a “second screen experience”.

But the network has chosen to be original in its own way. Both candidates’ microphones will remain on throughout the debate, giving Walz and Vance the chance to wreak havoc all on their own.