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by tacon
2221 days ago
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I am showing my age when I remember PBS having an entire show where two sides discussed an important issue of domestic or international concern. It was called "The Advocates"[0]. It ran for five years, and included a moderator and two teams that basically had a debate as a TV show. Michael Dukakis, who later was the Democratic nominee for president, was one of the moderators. (Dukakis' Wikipedia page has no mention that he was on national TV for years before running for president, which is pretty odd.) My understanding is that The Advocates was a result of the fairness doctrine, where television licensees had to show both sides of a subject. When the fairness doctrine went away, so did that show. At the end of every debate, viewers were encouraged to write in about which side they thought won. One reason I read for the demise of the show was that the letters received pretty consistently favored the right wing argument. The modern spin on The Advocates is Intelligence Squared[2]. [0] http://openvault.wgbh.org/collections/advocates/full-program... [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11014804/ [2] https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/ |
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The longer format and strong moderation really lend themselves to interesting discussions, and you can learn a lot. One of my favourite debates of this format (though not IQ) is Peter Thiel vs Eric Schmidt (then executive chairman of Google) arguing about whether Google was still capable of innovation [2012]:
https://youtu.be/PsXFwy6gG_4