Broadcasters should time-delay presidential debates, allowing them to mute any outright lies

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/17/broadcasters-should-time-delay.html

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No. That’s censorship, plus i don’t see how that’s constructive. What they need to do is fact check in real time and call them out on their bullshit instead of giving them a pass.

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Perhaps a fact-check ticker would be better…

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Mute, no. Put some big red text on screen flashing “FALSE,” sure.

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Reading is hard … how about we mute any applause for factually incorrect information?

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That is censorship at its worst. Many other methods exist to thwart false statements during a debate.

BTW: I thought that’s what the moderator is for.

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I hate to be so fair-minded, but I wouldn’t want anyone to do that with a candidate I support, so I wouldn’t want that even for the likes of The Great Orange Turd.

The solution (which is somewhat difficult to achieve, I admit) is to have a better informed, better educated electorate who won’t let anyone on the level of TGOT anywhere close to the presidential race.

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How about a big red “NOPE” instead?

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I like the fact check ticker idea. Also there should be a scorecard on the screen tracking the number of false statements made up to that point.

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nah, I am more with @Papasan - the moderator should confront the candidate directly with a factual error

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Surely passive-aggressive notes all over the screen during the presidential debate would bring up the level of discourse, though.

The problem with moderators is that Trump’s an amoral sociopath who only pays attention to anyone else’s authority when it’s useful to him, so unless they could also cut his mic/punish him, he’ll turn fact checks into another Trump Show game where he just heaps more BS on the pile he’s recently laid.

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Solution: shock collar.

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I thought the debates are highly regulated? With a strict form of question and answer sections and time restrictions? I don’t see it as an insolvable problem to add a short moderator statement after a candidate answered a question.

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They’re soft regulated. There are rules, but the expectation is the candidate will follow them, and there aren’t penalties for violations other than being chided since it’s an honor system. If you review the GOP primaries, you’ll find Trump laying continuous havoc to the rules.

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LOL. Christ, Cory, take a shit show and just add more shit? That is the solution?

These things are full of half truths and other political BS. You can’t possibly hope to mute all the true lies from half truths. “MEDIA BIAS!” will be screamed across the air waves as soon as something is muted by mistake or not muted! The only way it would work if just muting all their responses. Then it will sound like some of the rap songs with radio edits and every other world backmasked or muted.

It isn’t like there isn’t commentary afterwards for people who want to learn the truth. But mainly these are just for people to cheer their team on.

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<sigh> The biggest problem with this, over and above the censorship issues, is that Gillmor is expecting the broadcasters to be truthful.

Fox? CNN? MSNBC? Fox?

Nah, this just gives them a chance to lie by omission, so to speak. Only too easy to mute someone who doesn’t follow their specific pravda editorial policy and impute dishonesty on the part of the speaker.

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Because the media has been such a great arbiter of truth so far? Please.

The only conceivable way this would be fair is to have each news organization do its own muting in its own broadcast, and then you’d get just as many versions of the debate and "facts"as there are news organizations–pretty much what we get with the news already. So the proposal would solve nothing and introduces an asinine precedent of censorship that would be far worse than any “outright lies” a candidate utters.

Debates are already over-moderated and agenda driven by the moderators.

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Yeah. Or maybe networks could do some kind of Pop-Up Video overlay that calls out or corrects the bullshit without censoring it.

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So, an entire debate filled with silence and super speed text corrections overlying the screen? Sounds like a real party.

I like the idea of the pop-up bubble (a-la the VH1 show) with brief and simple explanations. You know for when tRump eventually gets around to saying that he’s always believed that Obama was born in the USA, and Hillary was the architect behind the birther movement… (a big bubble saying “this is absolute BS. Trump pandered to xenophobic racist elements of society by tRumpeting his support for the birther movement”).

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