I win, you lose. It is simple, really. The louder I scream, the more credibility and authority I build. Take the example of conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk, who created a profitable industry from debating underprepared college students. The establishment of Turning Point USA— a non-profit organization with the mission of educating students with the principles of limited government, free market and fiscal responsibility — is no more than an excuse for profiting off of college debates that garner millions of views across platforms such as YouTube.
Unfortunately, the political left is guilty of engaging in these sensational rage-bait debates as well. Gov. Gavin Newsom, in response to President Donald Trump’s use of the National Guard in Los Angeles immigration crackdowns, decided that the best course of action was to mimic Trump’s online trolling and deranged Truth social posts. Even though UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology poll shows that Newsom’s approval rating increased after his online discourse with Trump, the tactics the governor used bring into question the sensational nature politics have taken.
Political debates should not be about entertainment — that is what political satire is for. Instead, political debates should be grounded in a culture of compassion, compromise and accountability to effectively address public policy concerns.
To achieve this, political debates should encourage genuine representation of the opposing argument through the involvement of moderators. The main role of moderators — as defined by Los Angeles Times reporter Doyle McManus — is to keep the television program running. That means moderators are responsible for ensuring political figures stay on topic, setting time limits on responses and even fact-checking any false information. Despite conservative criticisms over the 2024 presidential election debate, ABC News’ moderator David Muir and Linsey Davis did an excellent job at fact-checking the unsubstantiated claims from Trump and then-Vice President Harris.
Conservatives’ main criticism of the debate was regarding perceived biased stances the moderators took by overly fact-checking Trump as compared to Harris. While conservatives do bring up a valid point over moderators’ credibility, it does not invalidate the obvious, poor performance from Trump. If anything, conservatives choosing not to recognize Trump’s poor performance says more about the lack of accountability in the Republican Party than it does about the possible biased nature of moderators.
To address this problem, a background check on moderators is a simple solution to this. These background checks can essentially look at any previous political experiences, coverage or even political ideology moderators have publicly endorsed. Thereafter, any individual who has openly or indirectly shown endorsement for a particular candidate can be removed as a potential moderator.
Additionally, just as elected federal officials take an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, moderators can take an oath to uphold a fair and honest debate. In essence, these measures would reorient moderators from being biased towards any particular political party and instead, bias them towards holding political officials accountable to the claims they make and the policy actions they’ve actually taken. Not all biases are necessarily bad, especially ones that are useful at identifying signs of danger — such as talking to strangers or noticing signs of abuse. Since the majority of people have explicit and implicit biases, reorienting moderators to be biased in accurately representing the arguments of each candidate is more realistic than expecting moderators to be unbiased at all.
Moderators should not only hold political candidates accountable through fact-checking, but they should also be responsible for holding a compassionate and compromising debate. Jubilee, an online channel with the mission of fostering human connection and understanding, attempted to create an alternative to political debates through series such as Middle Ground and Surrounded, where opposing sides attempt to reach a compromise. Although the platform has done a great job at representing various political views, it has done a terrible job at fulfilling its mission.
With YouTube videos such as “1 Progressive vs. 20 Far-Right Conservatives” that showcase a lack of basic human rights and compassion, it is difficult to claim that the mission of the platform is to foster empathy when they are clearly jumping on the profitable bandwagon of political sensationalism. While the platform failed to foster an alternative form of debates, this does not mean that it is impossible to change the culture surrounding them.
Instead, these platforms should have moderators who prevent forms of bigotry and logical fallacies to achieve compromise and compassion from opposing sides. Bigotry happens when someone chooses to obstinately believe their opinions as the absolute truth when faced with opposing beliefs. Moderators can prevent bigotry from occurring by allocating speaking time and muting debaters whenever constant interruptions are made. The mute feature does not infringe upon someone’s freedom of speech because it is intended to establish respect on both sides by allowing everyone to fully flesh out their arguments without interruption.
To prevent the abuse of muting by moderators, certain time limits can be implemented on rebuttals in addition to speaking time. For instance, a political figure can have three minutes to lay out their argument in addition to one minute to rebut any claims made by the opposing side. Additionally, two or three emergency mute features can be given to moderators to use only under extremely excessive interruptions on either side. By respecting each other’s time to speak, we are establishing compassion by recognizing each other’s beliefs.
Logical fallacies can be prevented from occurring by establishing rules before the debate. These rules can discourage common fallacies such as ad hominem, where an individual’s claim is rejected based on a specific aspect of their character, and straw man, the purposeful misinterpretation of an individual’s claim to reduce its validity, from occurring by instead encouraging mutual respect. The purposeful misinterpretation of someone’s argument during debate through logical fallacies is bad because it shifts the focus away from the productive exchange of ideas into an opportunity to ridicule each other.
Moderators can disengage from ridicule and logical fallacies by instead engaging in productive forms of thinking. Steel man, the process by which someone accurately and respectfully represents someone’s argument, is one of the strategies that ancient philosophers used to better understand someone’s claim. Accurately representing an opposing side’s argument not only forces you to think about how the other individual thinks, but it also helps you think about the weaknesses of the argument. Moderators can encourage this shift from logical fallacies to steel man processes by encouraging both sides to ask clarifying questions during their allocated rebuttal time.
Instead of choosing to support sensational, rage-bait debates, we can choose to create an alternative debate culture of accountability, compassion and compromise through the involvement of moderators. Debates should be centered around the respectful exchange of ideas, not about demonizing, ridiculing or hating the “other” side. We can still have the sensational, satirical aspects of politics, but we need to differentiate it away from what constitutes political debates.
Alex Alejo is an Opinion Intern for the fall 2025 quarter. He can be reached at aalejosa@uci.edu.
Edited by Rebecca Do
