You know what you need before ostentatiously conducting a fact-check? Actual facts. Like Candy Crowley at CNN twelve years ago, Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan smugly "corrected" a statement that was correct in the first place. And when J.D. Vance attempted to correct the "misinformation," CBS News cut the mics and insisted that they had more important issues to discuss. 

Really? The issue of Haitians in Springfield came up because O'Donnell and Brennan brought it up, and insisted on "fact checking" the response. Not only does News Nation's Chris Cuomo wonder what might be more important than the subject that CBS News itself brought up, he points out that Brennan and O'Donnell didn't know what they were talking about (via Trending Politics):

Former CNN contributor and current News Nation host Chris Cuomo praised how Vance handled one-sided “fact checking” and biased questions from debate moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell. “When they were talking at one point, Vance wanted to correct something about how Haitians got into this country, and he was right,” Cuomo said. “And the moderators wouldn’t let him correct it, very interesting.”

Cuomo also scoffed at the idea that "we have so much to get to," as Brennan put it. "Says who?" Cuomo wondered. "Now, you've created a story where you're the problem." And made themselves look like cowards by cutting the mics, too. 

That's not the first time that moderators have seemed intent on becoming participants (and as we'll see shortly, not the last time either). The Trump-Vance campaign got a commitment from CBS News that the moderators would not interject with fact checks during the debate. CBS set up a separate portal for real-time "fact checks" and advertised it repeatedly during the debate. That came from the debacle of ABC News' moderation in the presidential debate, where the "fact checks" turned out to be wrong, as well as CNN's 2012 debate, where Crowley had to correct herself the next day and admit Mitt Romney had been correct. 

As the Boston Globe points out, CBS moderators actually violated the rules a second time too, and then oddly declined to do it a third time to correct the other candidate:

At one other point Tuesday, wrapping up a discussion about climate change, O’Donnell said it was the overwhelming consensus of scientists that the planet was warming. Earlier, she had asked Vance whether or not he agreed with his running mate’s comment that climate change was a hoax. ... 

“As I read Minnesota law, it says that a doctor that presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide life-saving care,” Vance said.

Vance called that “fundamentally barbaric,” while Walz said his opponent’s interpretation of the law was untrue.

What did the law actually say? That was unclear, and viewers were left to decide which candidate they wanted to believe. The CBS moderators cut to a commercial, unable or unwilling to clarify the question.

That's because Vance had that right, too. The statute provides cover for doctors to refuse to provide life-saving care to infants born alive in a late-term abortion. After several cases of such deaths came to light, Walz then ordered Minnesota health agencies to stop reporting the live-birth deaths separately. This was also the subject of a false "fact check" by David Muir in the ABC News debate.

If O'Donnell and Brennan want to become debate participants, then let them resign their jobs and run for office. They clearly don't have much skill at research or fact-checking, and one has to wonder just how badly they manage to mangle the news as a result.

On the other hand, they probably got what they want by making themselves the story today, as Cuomo points out. Well done, I guess.