TV and radio journalists often pride themselves on being able to skewer their slippery politician victims and expose their half-truths, omissions, and economies with the truth. For many years, politicians retreated into repeated soundbites, in the hope that however foolish the interview, the bit that got on the news would be the thirty seconds of carefully scripted anodyne waffle.

In France, they have TV programmes that give politicians ‘100 minutes to convince’ whereas UK politicians are lucky to get 100 seconds in before facing the ‘have you stopped fiddling your expenses’-type flow stopper. ‘Yes or no? Answer the question!’ (Or any kind of question where a yes/no answer is equally damning.)

Some of our best-known presenters appear less concerned with eliciting useful information and challenging power on behalf of the barely interested electorate, than showing what clever chaps they are at the tedious parlour game of political interviewing.

And sometimes ‘incisive interviewing’ is not at all incisive, it’s just plain rude. It is all very unedifying and contributes to the general lack of respect in which our elected representatives are held, and by extension, our democracy.

What makes it worse is obvious bias from the presenter tucked into questions that the politician is unable to answer directly.

‘’When will you condemn the monstrous regime in Saudi Arabia/Venezuela/Iran/Turkey/Israel/ Palestine/Russia/USA?” The question is framed in such a way as to bring forth a reply such as “never” or “next Tuesday” but not to discuss the presenter’s own bias in presenting such-and-such country as a ‘monstrous regime’.

This device can be labelled as ‘assumed evaluation’. A question such as “Do you think country X is a monstrous regime?” is one that would allow the politician to discuss the country in question and is an ‘asserted evaluation’ and hence a fairer one, where we might actually get to understanding what the politician actually thinks and why.

Assumed evaluation tucks in bias and preconceptions and it is everywhere. Political pundits are adept at loading every question with their own viewpoints to such an extent that the public could be forgiven for feeling either ignorant for not knowing why questions are loaded or brainwashed by an unidentified agenda.

Question Time, the weekly bunfight overseen by the parlour game maestro on BBC TV, has politicians and pundits slipping assumed evaluation comments at each other for an hour of enraging non-illuminating debate.

We might easily spot assumed evaluation when a politician asks a member of another party ‘Are you going to condemn this appalling policy or not?’ but it’s harder to be alert to the biases, assumptions and the ‘we all know’s of the printed media.

This blog is indeed biased. I have been endeavouring to slip in as much assumed evaluation as I can. For example, in paragraph three, I say ‘the barely interested electorate’. If you and I were on Question Time you might argue with my main contention that TV presenters think it’s all about them, but I’d have slipped this slur on the Great British public right under your nose.

Credit as ever to OU module E303