They're fake.

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Melissa P

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May 21, 2021, 1:48:14 PM5/21/21
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I was able to attend the MSNBC town hall last week, held at Northern Virginia Community College, Alexandria (where Dr. Jill Biden has taught for several years).

Televised town halls are completely staged.  It makes perfect sense, of course, when every minute of an hour of TV must be planned in advance. I'm sure everyone here already knew it, but I can at least provide first-hand confirmation.

For example, I was not given an opportunity to ask a question.  As we were being signed in, those given blue wrist bands had been pre-selected to ask a question, I later discovered.  I was given a red wristband.

None of us knew what the blue bands meant until the show started.  In fact, a non-picked person was on his way to the mic when he was shooed back to his seat!

I did get to say something to Lawrence O'Donnell afterward.  When I told him that I loved Mr. Sterling and mentioned the similarity between Senator Sterling and Senator Manchin, he said:  "I love hearing that!"

It was also cool to hear President Biden, in the pre-taped interview that was shown before the town hall, talk about the data I used to help produce.

Doug Eastick

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May 21, 2021, 2:28:18 PM5/21/21
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Thanks Melissa.    I kind of always assumed they are highly staged.   And I guess that's why I don't watch them much.

But I did happen to catch the last 25 mins of Lawrence last night, where he followed up on a vax-hesitant  guy -- and they got jabbed live on MSNBC at Walmart last night.   So that was staged too.   I do, however, believe that he *was* hesitant, and the bigger story is how he changed his mind.   Kudos to his mom for joining in and getting jabbed too.



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Kevin M.

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May 21, 2021, 3:40:01 PM5/21/21
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Fake might be too strong a word. I’d go with pre-screened. Expecting genuinely random questions from a handful of audience members to be a fair representation of the populace at large is… well… look at TV ratings, determined by a few thousand people. So they pre-screen to ensure a diverse and useful set of questions, and to ensure the people asking questions can comport themselves at the microphone. Otherwise, you get conspiracy theorists and “babba booey!”

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PGage

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May 21, 2021, 5:12:26 PM5/21/21
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Right, unless the producers fed people the questions, I would not call that fake.

I used to organize Town Hall like sessions at the organization I worked for with visiting big whigs (one was with a pre-politicized Dr. Ben Carson). Originally we just put up two Mic stands and had people queue up to ask their questions. You only have to do this a few times to realize that inevitably you get three or four questions on the same topic (people actually say things like “I know this question was already asked, but I wanted to ask it again with just a very small modification”). Also, there will always be people who are too nervous or quiet or impossible to understand, and also some who over embrace the performative opportunity, and take 3 Minutes (a long time in the circumstance) to make a mini-speech before asking their question.

We found it much better, and easier, to ask people to submit questions in writing and then select a good variety that could be asked from the podium quickly. The moderator had the authority to ask follow up questions as appropriate.

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Melissa P

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May 21, 2021, 6:18:21 PM5/21/21
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First, I don't have the skills you guys have when it comes to clever subject lines, so I apologize if the title is imprecise.

Second, I attend many speeches/discussions that include Q&A sessions with the audience.  

I don't disagree with much of what you said.

But here's something interesting that I immediately noticed during the pandemic when the events I used to attend are now online.

I like to challenge speakers when I disagree with them.  I guess the topic I do most of the challenging on is school choice (I believe that there are exceptions, but most students belong in public schools.  I'm particularly opposed to public financing of any type of religious indoctrination education.)

In person, I'd often get called on and get to ask my question.  Now, however, the questions I submit online never get chosen.  Amusing, but also somewhat annoying.

So, while I agree that there are benefits for those in charge to being able to pick and choose, it can be a nonrandom process.


Tom Wolper

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May 21, 2021, 6:54:32 PM5/21/21
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On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 6:18 PM Melissa P <takingup...@gmail.com> wrote:
First, I don't have the skills you guys have when it comes to clever subject lines, so I apologize if the title is imprecise.

Second, I attend many speeches/discussions that include Q&A sessions with the audience.  

I don't disagree with much of what you said.

But here's something interesting that I immediately noticed during the pandemic when the events I used to attend are now online.

I like to challenge speakers when I disagree with them.  I guess the topic I do most of the challenging on is school choice (I believe that there are exceptions, but most students belong in public schools.  I'm particularly opposed to public financing of any type of religious indoctrination education.)

In person, I'd often get called on and get to ask my question.  Now, however, the questions I submit online never get chosen.  Amusing, but also somewhat annoying.

So, while I agree that there are benefits for those in charge to being able to pick and choose, it can be a nonrandom process.

I was going to post a response based on my experience but PGage got it almost word for word. What I would add is even in an in person forum the organizers will tell the audience it's okay if they leave during Q&A  and one bad, rambling, or irrelevant question can clear the room. A couple of months ago I called into a Zoom public meeting from the transit authority about a new project. The last slides showed that the project cost was over $200 million and that they had already raised close to the full amount. The second question came from a disability advocate who had a problem with the distance between stops. She asked the agency if the project was necessary, asked them to cancel it, and start planning over again. That's when I left the meeting and I'm sure many others left also. which means anybody asking a question after that wasn't heard by a lot of participants.

From my time in conferences I prefer people writing their questions out beforehand and having the moderator or someone on staff filter them and present good questions to the guest or panel.

Brad Beam

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May 21, 2021, 9:07:06 PM5/21/21
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From: tvor...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tvor...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Melissa P

>I did get to say something to Lawrence O'Donnell afterward.  When I told him that I loved Mr. Sterling and mentioned the similarity between Senator Sterling and Senator Manchin, he said:  "I love hearing that!"

 

Not recalling the show, I had to look up its description on the Wiki. And while I don’t know your points of recognition between the real and reel senators, as a constituent I’d say that Manchin is too old to be “idealistic.” He’s more the political equivalent of an opportunistic weathervane.

 

_   _

|_>|_>  Brad Beam- Belle WV

|_>|_>  http://www.facebook.com/74bmw

 

Melissa P

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May 21, 2021, 9:21:28 PM5/21/21
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If I remember correctly, Senator Sterling (who chose to be an Independent when he took over his father's seat) held the balance of power in the Senate.


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Melissa P

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May 21, 2021, 10:16:47 PM5/21/21
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Kevin, you've never taken a class in statistics?

Kevin M.

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May 21, 2021, 10:28:51 PM5/21/21
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On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 7:16 PM Melissa P <takingup...@gmail.com> wrote:
Kevin, you've never taken a class in statistics?

Two classes, so I know full well that one crackpot in the representative sampling can dilute the results.

In college we had an NPR Jazz radio station on campus and a student-run grunge radio station (because it was in the state of Washington in the 1990s). One day in the mail I received notification from Arbitron that they wanted me to participate in the radio survey. Naturally, I was the crackpot in question, only because I told the truth: those were the only stations I listened to, and at very odd hours. When the ratings book came out, I represented some 13k people. And the drunk overnight DJ at the jazz station went from #17 to #2 in his time slot.

 

On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 3:40 PM Kevin M. <drunkba...@gmail.com> wrote:
well… look at TV ratings, determined by a few thousand people.

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Melissa P

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May 21, 2021, 11:12:17 PM5/21/21
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Well, for a short period of time, you represented all of the radio-listening crackpots in that area of the country.  Crackpots deserve representation, too, don't you think?

One of my former colleagues went to work for Arbitron.

PGage

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May 22, 2021, 12:06:55 AM5/22/21
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I agree that one limitation on submitted questions is the moderators can censor otherwise legitimate challenges to either the Speaker or the conventional wisdom. Our solution to that was to have a faculty committee representative of various perspectives access to all submitted questions. They did not make the selections, but they were able to monitor any potential bias and spill the beans to the community. Seems like a political Townhall sponsored by the media could have a group of reporters from various outlets do something similar, or even later release all submitted questions.

Also, I agree with you about public schools.

Brad Beam

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May 23, 2021, 8:37:43 PM5/23/21
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From: tvor...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tvor...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Melissa P

>If I remember correctly, Senator Sterling (who chose to be an Independent when he took over his father's seat) held the balance of power in the Senate.

 

True.

 

And with the head of the state’s Republican-family dynasty Sen. Capito serving as the minority leader on the Appropriations Committee – critiquing the Biden infrastructure plan – WV has outsize influence in this Congress.

 

Not bad for a state which lost a football stadium’s worth of people over the last decade….

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