Why CBS News Will Be in the Hot Seat During the VP Debate

Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be trading barbs and cat references back and forth during Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, but it’ll be CBS News—and its top anchors—in the hot seat.

Tuesday’s 9 p.m. debate, set to broadcast out of the famed CBS Broadcast Center in midtown Manhattan, will be the network’s most high-profile—and highly visible—test of its journalism since its lauded interview with Pope Francis in May.

But much has changed for the network since then. It has new owners on the way, for one, and the anchors who’re moderating the debate offer competing visions for the network’s future. One is a rising star of its coverage, while the other appears to be on her way out.

The debate will be co-moderated by CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell, 50, and Face the Nation anchor Margaret Brennan, 44. According to The New York Times, It’s being overseen by Brennan’s Face the Nation producer Mary Hager, who serves as the organization’s executive editor for politics, and David Reiter, CBS News’ senior vice president in charge of events.

The 90-minute event comes less than two months after billionaire David Ellison’s Skydance finished its monthslong quest to buy Paramount Global, the organization’s parent company, and after the company completed two rounds of job slashings, of which CBS News was not spared. It’s seen the likes of reporter Catherine Herridge and anchor Jeff Glor go in the last eight months, and a third round of cuts at the end of the year may see the home of journalists like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow under further pressures.

T.J. Kirkpatrick/CBS via Getty Images

Such chaos may even be apparent on screen. O’Donnell, one of the debate’s moderators, was demoted in August after her evening news show never managed to leave its third-place limbo. (She is also a 60 Minutes contributing correspondent.)

The network touted the move as a new opportunity for O’Donnell, who will pivot to big interviews (e.g. her praised sit-downs with Francis and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson) after the election. But it was apparent what the move meant for O’Donnell, particularly after the network replaced her with a group of men.

It’s also in stark contrast to Brennan, CBS News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent who commands Sunday’s Face the Nation every week. It’s Brennan’s producer who is helping put together the debate, and the split-screen between the anchors—rumored to have a tenuous relationship—signify who CBS is prioritizing. Whatever, the debate is also the only debate so far this cycle—and potentially at all—moderated exclusively by women.

Josh Huskin/CBS via Getty Images

Known for her incisive interview style, Brennan has already managed to roil the likes of MAGA through her interview with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem after Noem admitted in her memoir to killing her dog Chester. She also conducted a separate, similarly contentious interview with Vance earlier this month after he and former President Donald Trump claimed Haitian migrants were killing pets in Springfield, Ohio.

But Tuesday’s debate is not an interview with either Vance or Walz, as the network has tried to make clear. “The goal of the debate is to facilitate a good debate between the candidates, and the moderators will give them the opportunity to fact-check each other in real time,” Claudia Milne, the network’s head of standards and practices, told the Times on Monday.

To do that, the network will have a team of about 20 reporters fact-checking the two candidates in real time. But viewers—and only CBS viewers—will only be able to see those fact checks by scanning a QR code on their screen, which will take them to the CBS News website.

It’s a split-the-baby decision that differs the network from debates conducted by CNN (which offered no fact-checking) and ABC (which only fact-checked Trump, spurring the former president’s ire). The idea, Milne told the Times, is to give the audience a “second-screen experience.”

But the network has opted to be original in its own ways. Both candidates’ mics will remain on throughout the entire debate, giving Walz and Vance a chance to cause chaos all on their own.