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by nobrains 1620 days ago
Man-on-the-street interviews should record the entire footage for transparency, without any cuts, for transparency, so that the audience can know which opinions were kept and which were removed.
6 comments

Reminds me of a movie I saw as a kid. Can't remember the exact situation. But some celebrity, super-hero or whatever got asked by a journalist something ala "why did you say you hate this city?" and they answered "I have never said 'I hate this city'". Then what was aired was the last of that sentence, only the 'I hate this city' part.
I think that's the Scooby Doo live action sequel.
Haha, that's it. Thanks! Funny that it even has its own knowyourmeme page.
Arrested development has this gag as well with “I killed Earl Milford”. Here it is:

https://youtu.be/41mYxGQL1qg

Things they told us at boot camp:

It is ok to tell them your name and rank.

Expect everything else to be twisted.

Luckily I have never been tested in such a situation, I guess it will be pretty hard to stick to this in the long run.

As with everything, the Simpsons did it too. I think it was a grest piece of media literacy education to me as a kid.
Should, but nobody will watch that unless they themselves are investigative journalists. It adds a lot of noise to something that's already low on signal.
Eventually they'll figure out at what street corner to stand to find people with the leanings they want to film, if they're intent on coloring the reporting. At some point you'll also have to let go and trust the reporter or the outlet they work for, which admittedly is an increasingly challenging decision, these days.
They don't need to do that. Interviewing people on the street already selects for the kind of people who wander around shopping malls in the middle of a weekday, ie those who don't work 9-5, very much not a cross-section of society. The sooner vox pops disappear altogether the better.
I got interviewed for one of these man in the street things for a local newspaper. I had just completed jury duty and was about to grab an early lunch and head into work. The reporter paraphrased my words very slightly when it went to print but the intent and meaning was the same so no complaints from me.
Don't even have to do that, literally everyone passing them by could have been instructed on what to say, out-of-view.

If there's a solution it's probably something akin to research preregistration.

If there's a solution

Isn't what you're asking for just polling?

Aren't we trying to solve the trustworthiness of street interviews?
You can't. They are unrepresentative and meaningless as a means to inform.
so that the audience can know which opinions were kept and which were removed.

Let's be honest, you already know that just from the context of the question and which show is doing the interview. If the audience is deceived it's only because they want to be.

And how woefully undereducated and uninformed - or willfully ignorant (maybe even dumb) - a large percentage of the population is.
I am reminded of this story:

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/04/08/less-ameri...

(also here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/0...

)

Most people answering a 2014 poll (hopefully uniformly sampled) could not locate Ukraine on a map of the world, with many placing it in Africa, East Asia, Greenland or even the US; but the more interesting part was that the farther from its actual location was people's guess, the more they were supportive of US military intervention in Ukraine.

> And how woefully undereducated and uninformed - or willfully ignorant (maybe even dumb) - a large percentage of the population is.

A couple of people-on-the-street interviews will never ever give you an accurate representation of "a large percentage of the population".

Edit: see also this comment- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29889236

In my less pessimistic moments I like to think that many are not quite that uninformed and the interviewers find enough by sheer numbers interviewed.

What gets me is how easily inexperienced people are led to saying exactly what the interviewer wants. And it is blatant: they don't even pretend that isn't what they are doing on live news anymore.

Nobody will watch the 6-18hours of raw footage.
It's not needed for everybody to watch this footage, summary video can be presented. It just should be linked somewhere for those who want to see the results and verify summary themselves.
Yes. But I still think that nobody (lets say <1%) will watch this.
It might be enough. Like open source - not everybody needs to read the source code, it is enough when one knowledgeable person does that and makes a stink when they find something fishy.
Very much this. "The average person won't ..." is a huge fallacy. This also applies to repair (that knowledgeable people are able to do it is enough because they can sell it as a service at economically viable prices).
The footage is for verification only. No one will watch the whole thing, but people can scan through it and notice if the conclusion most people are giving different from the edited shorter final production video.
Then don't show any of it