Source: BBC

Debate season has arrived, giving fact-checkers plenty of work.

Plenty of half-truths (and outright non-truths) were uttered during the Clinton-Trump debate last week, and Tuesday’s Kaine-Pence head-to-head saw outright denial of statements that had been made on the record – and on camera.

ABC’s Martha Raddatz and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who will moderate the second presidential debate on Sunday, face a sizeable challenge. Will they manage to respond correctly to any lapses in truth-telling by the candidates?

One man has some advice for them.

Joe Navarro estimates that he conducted 13,000 interviews while working for the FBI, during which plenty of people tried to mislead him.

Before his retirement in 2003, he also taught advanced counterterrorism interview techniques for the bureau. The man knows how to weed out the truth: so what does he think?

1) Language really matters (including body language)

“The difficult thing about lying is we all do it, and we have all done it from a very early age,” Navarro says. “As a species, we are very deceptive – if you want your mother’s attention, you might pretend you hurt yourself.”

The way a sentence is framed may hint whether a lie is being peddled, but so may the way it is delivered.

“If you ask a question, does it cause some sort of psychological discomfort, and if it does, how does it manifest in the body?

“The body reveals in real time your psychological discomfort. Do they purse their lips? Do they begin to touch their neck? Do they increase their smoking?”

Neither candidate is likely to light up, though – neither smokes, and all buildings at Washington University in St Louis, which is hosting the debate, are no-smoking zones.

2) Tease out the lie, and cut them off

“What we tried to do is to start with open questions,” says Navarro, now an author and public speaker. “‘What’s your experience of this?’ ‘What do you think about this?’ You hold back that which you are certain about.

“I would allow them to say whatever they want, and once they have said it, cut them off sharp and say ‘No, that is not accurate, that doesn’t match up with the truth, and here’s why.’

Read more