PM Debate. Why was there no cross examination by the audience.?

[modeller]

Most of the questions were too general and could be waffled away by the leaders.
Should the audience or the questioner have been allowed to challege the answers.?
There may have been fewer questions overall but we would then have got down to
the nitty gritty that concerns ordinary people.

[DrFilth]

ordinary people ask the wrong questions

[New Judge]

And when they do they are labelled bigots.

[olddutch]

Yes - and to make it more forensic and interesting have an expert political non-politician panel (like say Ian Hislop, David Starkey, Niall Ferguson) as part of the audience to follow up on ordinary audience members questions and, where necessary, further question, contest, interpret and explain the politicians answers/non answers to the audience and viewers.

[jno]

that should be a good way of getting through one question a night. Watch Paxman if you want cross-examination; the whole point of these programmes is that they got the candidates together in front of the public, not journalists.

[modeller]

jno That is the point the public were not involved they were used only to ask a question that had already been prepared . That is why they read them out .

[jno]

so how many people do you want yelling unprepared questions?

[modeller]

jno I'm never impolite to ABs but I'll make an exception in your case. Your answers are are plain silly. Try Chatter Bank .

[naomi24]

Yes, the audience/questioner should have been allowed to challenge the answers. If unchallenged politicians will squirm their way around anything.

[jno]

you want politicians' views challenged but you don't like your own challenged, eh, modeller? You should be in parliament. Your impoliteness will be a plus there.

[olddutch]

Jno

"that should be a good way of getting through one question a night".

A bit of an exaggeration methinks - it might take a bit longer but its doable - a one minute rule perhaps for experts depending on future format of TV debates


“ the whole point of these programmes is that they got the candidates together in front of the public, not journalists”

Not the whole point - only part of it - the expert panel would have the job of bringing expert enlightenment/insight/criticism for the studio audience and viewers alike on politicians answers or non answers - esp where the politicians evade or dissemble on the questions put by the audience - similar to how David Dimbleby does it on Question Time - the whole debate would be enhanced for audience and viewer - the future debate format should be nearer to that on Question Time with audience follow up questions comment and applause - perhaps have the politicians seated for 2 hour debates and double the number of debates to 6 - so we all learn even more about who and what we are voting for.

[VHG]

The political parties came up with 76 rules for these debates.

They included things like no clapping and so on.

So you can bet one of the rules was only pre prepared questions (it did mean the questions covered a wide spectrum than just being about one thing).

[anotheoldgit]

In the old days, the politicians would face their audiences in the Village/Town hall, they didn't know what questions they were going to be bombarded with.

Now we have an ideal medium with television, so that the masses can witness the event, so why should the method of being cross questioned by the studio audience be any different?

[modeller]

It all looked like a farce to me . David Dimbleby had the questions printed out in front of him and copies were given to a number of the audience to read out.
The audience was just window dressing they did nothing but read out what they were given . It served its purpose it allowed the leaders to get their messages across and required them to justify them but it was not a debate with the public.
David Dimbleby could just as well have read out the questions himself. We don't know but I would bet the party leaders also knew what questions were going to come up.