Earlier this week, the Democratic candidates participated in a debate moderated by CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer. The CNN coverage of the debate said that Blitzer served "as ringmaster and referee," language that suggests the debate is more theater than policy. CNN's coverage provided a summary of the statements made by candidates on a variety of policy issues and included an excerpt from each of them. What they failed to do is investigate the claims made by candidates in the debate, particularly claims about past positions and votes. For instance, at one point in the story John Edwards made this comment about Hillary Clinton. "She says she will turn up the heat on George Bush and the Republicans, but when the crucial vote came on stopping Bush, Cheney and the neocons on Iran, she voted with Bush and Cheney." Unfortunately, CNN never bothered to check and see how Clinton voted on that legislation regarding US policy towards Iran. The "liberal" radio news program, NPR didn't do much better with its story on the debate. NPR focused on Hillary Clinton's claims that her Democratic opponents were "slinging mud" and that "Clinton needed a better performance than the last debate." There was little reporting in the NPR story on issues, with only a brief mention of Iraq and immigration. The Annenberg Political Fact Check provides an excellent analysis of a debate in terms of both issues and accuracy. Just to be clear, the Annenberg analysis is of another debate in Las Vegas, the one hosted by MSNBC. Their team of researchers provides more details of the debate and they check the voting records and positions of the candidates on numerous issues in such a way so readers can verify claims made by the candidates. One example of this kind of fact checking is in response to a claim made by Hillary Clinton where she mischaracterized the 2005 energy bill, saying it had "enormous giveaways" to oil and gas companies. In truth, the measure raised taxes on those industries.

Clinton: Well, Tim, I think it's well accepted that the 2005 energy bill was the Dick Cheney lobbyist energy bill. It was written by lobbyists. It was championed by Dick Cheney. It wasn't just the green light that it gave to more nuclear power. It had enormous giveaways to the oil and gas industries. ... It was the wrong policy for America. It was so heavily tilted toward the special interests that many of us, at the time, said, you know, that's not going to move us on the path we need, which is toward clean, renewable green energy. Analysis: This is the third time we've pointed out Clinton's distortion of this legislation. She is continuing a bogus line of attack that we debunked when Democrats deployed it widely in the 2006 congressional elections. While it's true that Republican lawmakers had once considered large tax breaks for oil and gas companies in the bill, the biggest of them had been stripped out of the bill by the time it passed.

Once again, it's true that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 contained $14.3 billion in tax breaks, but most of them weren't for the oil and gas industry. They went mainly to electric utilities for such things as incentives for new transmission lines and "clean coal" facilities, and also for incentives for alternative fuels research and subsidies for energy efficient cars and homes. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the bill did give $2.6 billion in tax breaks for oil companies, but what Clinton fails to acknowledge is that those breaks were more than offset by $2.9 billion in tax increases. The net result was a $300 million tax increase over 11 years on oil and gas companies. This is the kind of reporting we need from journalists on a regular basis. When reporters verify claims made by candidates, not only are voters better informed, it creates a climate of accountability no matter who is elected.