A sacred responsibility shirked.

Moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan listen as Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaks during a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News, with Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Tuesday’s VP debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz offered further compelling evidence – as if further evidence is needed – that debate sponsor CBS, in keeping with the rest of the legacy news organizations, has abandoned even the pretense of journalistic objectivity.

Tuesday’s debate rules specified that the moderators would not fact check the candidates and would instead allow the candidates to fact check each other. As my mother often said, “that didn’t last ‘til the water got hot.”

In the portion of the debate devoted to immigration (a subject upon which much less time was spent than on climate change and January 6), JD Vance was making a point about the approximately ten thousand Haitian migrants that the Biden administration has air-dropped into Springfield, Ohio, a community of only 58,000.

CBS News debate moderator Margaret Brennan – in direct contravention of the rules – dove in to “correct” Senator Vance on his assertion that the Haitian migrants are here illegally. As it happens, JD Vance’s premise was right and Margaret Brennan’s “correction” of him was wrong.

To Vance’s credit, he didn’t let Brennan get away with it, despite her sputtering about having “so much to get to,” (such as climate change and January 6).

Vance said,

The rules that you were not going to fact-check, and since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on.”

(That’s how it’s done, Mitt Romney. Just sayin’.)

But the particulars of the Haitian migrant situation in Springfield, Ohio stand beside the point.

The point is that the legacy media – as now embodied by elitist, condescending partisan hacks like Margaret Brennan – are deeply in the tank for the Democratic Party and anyone who is opposed to Donald Trump. I was privy to the emails that CBS News Radio was sending to their affiliates Tuesday night. Though both candidates misstated some facts, CBS News emailed their radio affiliates numerous fact-checks against JD Vance while not offering even a single fact-check against Tim Walz.

Am I surprised by that? Of course not. Am I appalled by it? Absolutely.

Though CBS, ABC, NBC, The Washington Post and The New York Times no longer command the audience shares they once did, they are still huge. Despite years of squandering their inheritance from the days when 92 percent of the country trusted Walter Cronkite, these legacy organizations are still the primary sources of news for millions of Americans. They continue to enjoy their status as practitioners in the one field of professional endeavor to be given specific protection in the U.S. Constitution. They continue to be at the front of the line when it comes to the necessarily limited access by news media to the top leaders and top levels of the U.S. government. (That’s a way of saying that a reporter from CBS will get a seat in the White House briefing room long before Paul Gleiser from KTBB gets one.)

Put simply, the legacy media organizations are still at the top of the food chain in American media. They are the privileged ones. They get the best seats at the political conventions and the first access to disaster sites like those we’re currently seeing in western North Carolina. They’re still the big dogs. (They also get reservations at the best restaurants when those same restaurants are telling the likes of you and me that they’re fully booked for the night.)

For all these reasons, the Margaret Brennans of the world bear a special responsibility.

In America, a properly informed electorate can be counted on to get it right at the ballot box more often than not. A commitment to fairness and objectivity toward the goal of creating that informed electorate is a small price to pay for the privilege and standing that the legacy media continue to enjoy.

That they have long ago abandoned that commitment does much to explain why we in America are at each other’s throats.