WASHINGTON – After the “presidential forum” in New York, in which Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took questions in serial fashion but didn’t appear together, much of the critical reaction fell not on them but on the moderator, NBC News’ “Today” host Matt Lauer, who is known more for dealing with entertainment figures than with high-level politicians in the midst of a critical national campaign.

Many critics argued that Lauer spent too much time pressing Clinton on her handling of emails when she was secretary of state, while he failed to push Trump on false assertions. One such was Trump’s claim to have opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq from the start, in the face of evidence on a radio talk show that he actually had supported it.

According to the website Buzzfeed, on the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks Trump told radio host Howard Stern (himself no paragon of journalism), when asked whether he was for such an invasion, “Yeah, I guess so; I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

Trump has tried to water down that comment, insisting, “Howard Stern was many months before we went into Iraq, and if you saw, I was very tepid.” Yet in January 2003, Trump told Neil Cavuto on Fox News of President George W. Bush’s talk of invasion: “Well, he has either got to do something or not do something, perhaps, because perhaps (he) shouldn’t be doing it, and perhaps we should be waiting for the UN, you know.”

One critic of Trump’s flip-flop on the invasion is Clinton, who as a senator voted in 2002 authorize the invasion but later called her vote a mistake. She said then that President Bush had persuaded her he needed congressional support to induce the United Nations to back the action.

The Lauer pile-on by news-media colleagues, including prominent fact-checker columnists, was particularly harsh. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler asked how someone like Lauer could “not set the record straight on Trump’s bogus claim of being against the war in Iraq,” suggesting he “needed to do more homework, for both candidates. Very poor follow-ups.” Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times called his performance “an embarrassment to journalism” and “not a serious discussion of foreign policy.”

However, one of the journalists chosen to moderate a face-to-face presidential debate this fall, Chris Wallace of Fox News, said this: “I do not believe it is my job to be a truth squad. It is up to the other person to catch the other one, though I certainly am going to try to maintain some semblance of equal time. I suspect I’m not going to have any problem getting them to engage each other, but I don’t view my role as truth-squading.” Wallace is scheduled to moderate the third debate, on Oct. 19 in Las Vegas.

Wallace’s viewpoint seems a rather antiseptic position for any moderator to take, given the critical role of the independent Commission on Presidential Debates and the high stakes involved. Nor should a moderator be chosen who lacks the political knowledge to put the candidates’ feet to the fire on the truth or falsity of their observations and their own records.

The commission in the past chose wisely with seasoned and fair political reporters and analysts such as the retired Jim Lehrer of PBS and Bob Schieffer of CBS News, who were sole moderators. This year, three others will share the chore: Lester Holt of NBC News for the first one Sept. 26, Martha Raddatz of ABC News and Anderson Cooper of CNN together for the second, and Wallace for the third.

Absent this time around, regrettably in my view, will be experienced news reporters on the national political beat as panel questioners – a useful feature of past debates. Many reporters have followed Clinton and Trump closely all the last year, and they know what questions can best educate the voters. After all, the debates should be much more than mere entertainments guided by a morning television talk show host.