What Channel is the Presidential Debate On at 9 PM EST Tonight and Other Quick Facts
October 3, 2012: Tonight’s presidential debate begins at 9 p.m. EST and will be broadcast live on ABC, CBS, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, and all cable news channels. Jim Lehrer, host of NewsHour and moderator of 11 other presidential debates, will serve as referee between President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney as they debate domestic policy at the University of Denver in Colorado.
The topics for this debate include:
9:00pm to 9:45pm: U.S. Economy
9:45pm to 10:00pm: Health Care
10:00pm to 10:15pm: Role of Government
10:15pm to 10:30pm: Governing
October 11, 2012, 9:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. EST
Vice President Joe Biden and Paul Ryan will debate foreign and domestic policy at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. Martha Raddatz, Chief Foreign Correspondent at ABC News, will moderate a debate divided into nine time segments of ten minutes each.
October 16, 2012, 9:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. EST
In a Town Meeting format at Hofstra University in New York, Obama and Romney will respond directly to citizen’s questions. Candy Crowley, CNN’s Chief Political Correspondent, will serve as moderator. The citizen participants will be undecided voters selected by the Gallup Organization.
October 22, 2012, 9:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. EST
President Barack Obama will return to the debate stage one final time before Election Day. Bob Schieffer, host of Face the Nation on CBS will lead a debate on foreign policy at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida.
November 6, 2012: Election Day.
Many states require voters to register by October 6th, 2012. Be sure to complete your voter registration this week to be able to do your part to participate in the democratic process. Those who don’t at least write in a candidate are in no position to complain about problems in America!
Fact Checking the Debates:
All journalists have a civic responsibility to accurately report the truth behind the political spin. Unfortunately, the source of one’s paycheck often plays a major role in what a reporter or website includes or omits. Here is an alphabetical list of fact checkers for tonight’s debate, along with their financial loyalties:
CNN’s Fact Check will live stream the debate. CNN is owned by Time Warner, Inc., a multinational media conglomerate that is publicly traded as a for-profit company.
FactCheck.org is a non-profit non-partisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center that is primarily funded by small individual donors, and the estate of Walter Annenberg, a publisher and philanthropist who died in 2002.
Fox News’s Fact Checking is a project of Fox News, which is owned by the second largest media conglomerate in the world, News Corporation, a public company primarily controlled by their owner, Chairman and CEO, an Australian American named Rupert Murdoch.
Politifact.com’s Truth-o-meter is a project of the Tampa Bay Times, which is published by the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit school for journalism that was funded by a generous endowment from journalist, Nelson Poynter, who died in 1978.
The best strategy is always to do your own research; Google or one of the above websites is a great place to start.
