Debates
TV3 has announced that it will only invite six party leaders to its election debate, to be moderated by John Campbell. It will decide which six leaders to invite on the basis of the next TV3 opinion poll, due out in the next week or so. This will see the Progressives and either United or Act excluded. Rodney Hide is hacked off with this decision, calling it “undemocratic”.
To be fair, inviting six parties seems kind of arbitrary. The average of the past three public opinion polls has the parties as follows:
National: 41.0%
Labour: 37.0%
NZ First: 8.0%
Greens: 7.0%
United: 1.8%
Maori: 1.8%
Act: 1.4%
This would suggest that there are currently four brackets of parties: the majors (National/Labour), the major-minors (NZ First/Greens), the minor-minors (United/Maori/Act), and the ridiculously-minors (Progressives). So, if you’re going to start limiting the number of party leaders in an election debate, you should invite two (Helen Clark and Don Brash), four (these two plus Winston Peters and a Green Co-Leader), or seven (all of these plus Peter Dunne, Tariana Turia, and Rodney Hide).
Six is the worst of all worlds: TV3 will annoy some parties, but without having a clear-sighted basis for making its decision.
July 26th, 2005 at 10:28 am
As I understand it, TV3 is a private company and has not signed any charter with the NZ Govt so I guess it is not oblidged to be “democaratic” in its choices of whom to invite. Joy.
July 26th, 2005 at 11:28 am
TV Debates
Frog suggests a less arbitary method of determining who is invited and excluded, and I tend to agree. Exlcuding a party which may only be 0.2% less than another party is silly, and TV3 should reconsider.
July 26th, 2005 at 11:52 am
The media are in a position of power. It is irresponsible to misrepresent something as important as an election campaign. True democracy can only be acheived with unbiased media.
July 26th, 2005 at 12:17 pm
Joy:
Well, that’s true as far as it goes. But I hope the desire to run run credible and balanced election coverage doesn’t require state media ownership or regulation. Personally, I don’t think this kind of format is necessarily more informative than holding a dog fight in prime time, with party rosettes pinned to the dumb beasts’ backs, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see.
July 26th, 2005 at 1:16 pm
Indeed, you do have a point. A leader’s debate, for entertainment, does not give the viewers an indepth, nor broad view of a leader/party. Joy.
July 26th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
I disagree - Maori and United are not minor-minors the way that Act is, because they have safe electorate seats, so they almost certainly will in parliament next term: and Act certainly will not.
Act is dead. I do try hard not to be vindictive but… if it wasn’t for the fact that their grave will be forgotten and unmarked, I’d dance on it.
July 26th, 2005 at 3:20 pm
Icehawk nails it. Maori may not know exactly what they want but they have to be represented in the debate. I think that would explain the “odd” count.
I am curious though. Why only ONE debate. There’s enough time and certainly enough interesting topics to have 3 of them.
There’s only one way to go deep and that’s to take the time to do it. I would NOT mind getting all the players on the stage more than once.
respectfully
BJ
July 26th, 2005 at 4:34 pm
bjchip, there will be 3 debates (on TV3)
the others be
* clark vs brash alone
* the finance spokespersons (paper doesn’t say whether it is Labour/National only, or the same 6, or all the parties).
cheers
July 26th, 2005 at 4:48 pm
BJ,
I read your comment on my email notification but I do not see it above. Yes, I agree with you about all parties, and several deabtes. The closeness of the parties in each category suggests to me that there should be many indepth interviews and debates. Joy.
July 26th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
BJ:
Well, I’d rather have six nights of Campbell Live with each leader being asked the same questions - which would avoid the cock fight with Tourettes element of these kind of shows.
July 27th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
Craig - You have a point. They’d have to have more than one presenter doing the questions though. Sooner or later the presenter’s political bias (and I don’t know Campbell’s from soup), will become an issue with SOME party in the mix.
respectfully
BJ
July 27th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
Craig, I really like your idea, except that I reckon they should split up the interviews by question and show each leader responding to the same question, one after another.
Then easy to have more than six leaders, and could easily romp through a couple of questions in each segment of the show, so could have between 4 to 6 questions within each major themed show. You could even randomise the order of the playback of the answers so that each party got a chance to have first say and each party got a turn at last place when your fed up and no longer care what someone thinks about X issue.
You’d have to think up questions that were applicable to all leaders, and it would be great if they were
* unprepared beforehand,
* all asked the same way,
* and had no idea what anyone else said of the question.
I’m not sure that the egos of the major political interviewers would be up to it though, it would marginialise them to the role of glorified teleprompter. Maybe it could only work as a sort of disembodied voice big brother diary room kinda thing.
cheers
July 27th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
Stuey,
I like your proposal. I like to have information at this time of the election cycle, not entertainment or a shouting match. Joy.