So, it’s the run up to the election and the BBC’s Question Time has had on all three leaders of major parties. In Question Time the audience always asks questions so its composition is pretty important.
I think this is a good example of begging the question.That is: Is the BBC impartial?
Practical experience says it is not, and never has been. In fact in recent years it’s gone beyond biased to a massively funded propaganda arm of the UK establishment (who don’t really care which party is in power as it owns all of them)
A political debate should not be about answering softball questions from your own supporters. As the front-runners, it is even more important that the Tories and Labour be called to answer for their positions by those who oppose them, so allowing them to only face 65% hostile questioning while the Greens face 95% hostile questioning is arse-backwards.
To the OP, I think the BBC can’t win here. If they select based on opinion polls, they’ll be accused of trying to influence the vote. If they select equal numbers for every party, they’ll be accused of giving too much voice to minority parties.
Maybe they should base numbers on current seats in Parliament. It would skew the audience in the Tories favour, but at least they could argue that they are trying to reflect the electorates choice up to this point.
Really? I quite like the immediate feedback that a live audience participation brings, horses for courses I guess.
As to the OP I’d select by random lot, I think it’d give the best facsimile of speaking to the audience at home and by definition means the picker of the audience can’t be accused of a bias.
If the Tories deserve their current level of support, they should be capable of sustaining that support in the face of hostile questioning by giving answers that their supporters want to hear. But if they do not deserve their current level of support, allowing them to avoid being questioned by their opponents is the best way of ensuring that undeserved support continues.
But the question isn’t should the incumbent government be given a hard time, it’s what should the BBC do to avoid accusations of political bias. By your method, they could be accused of being anti-Tory. Even if I agree with your point about holding the government to account, which I do. That isn’t the BBC’s role.
Anyway, insofar as I can give attention to such a ridiculous tempest in a teapot: random.
The complaints seem moronic, since the scum craving votes ( money + power ) from the dimwits are supposed to argue convincingly enough to get undecided votes. If the audience is already for or against by faction then they are obviously not the undecided votes.
Then why are they running the debate? The adversarial element is essential for a debate to be a debate, otherwise it’s just a circle-jerk. Giving Tory voters more opportunities to ask questions means giving the Tory candidate less meaningful questions, and it’s stupid to give the least attention to the candidate who is most likely to win because he’s the most likely to win.
It was perfectly fine and fair. Certainly a good candidate for “least worst” option.
The only people complaining will be those who think their leaders screwed up on the night.
As for a biased BBC? cite for that please. They get a kicking for being both terribly left-wing, right-wing and non-committal all at the same time.
And yet you still haven’t answered the OP. How does the BBC remain neutral if the audience doesn’t reflect the country? I personally want to see the Tories beaten up in debate as often as possible, but that is not the debate in this thread…
I’d be up for an audience of undecided voters, who might actually ask some thought provoking questions rather than just trying to score points. Didn’t the BBC do something like that at the last election?
Which suggests the debates are held purely to swing undecided voters in the studio audience. I merely pointed out that the debates aren’t held for the benefit of the audience, they are for the benefit of anyone in the country who cares to listen in.
As an aside, I also don’t hold with the drunk-at-the-bar view that all politicians are ‘scum’. Some might be, but many aren’t. Do you actually know any politicians?
But what we’re looking for is thought-provoking answers. The questions are there to push the candidates into giving those answers, and somebody who wants to score points by forcing a candidate to self-destruct is better suited to ask such questions than one who either does not know or does not care about the issues that might trigger such a response.
I think the rules for a debate should be different than the rules of an election. The representatives of the three parties should be facing an equalized situation so they can present the views of their party, even though their parties do not have equal amounts of support among the electorate. And part of that should be that each candidate should face a crowd that has an equal mix of supporters and opponents.