There is a rhetorical move where someone smuggles a premise into a question, so that answering the question at all means accepting the premise.
"Why is the government hiding the real numbers?"
You cannot answer that without granting that numbers are being hidden. Dispute the premise and you look evasive. Answer the question and you have conceded the point.
It shows up constantly in interview formats, where the pressure to respond quickly makes the trap effective. It also shows up in headlines, where a question mark does the work of a claim without the accountability of one.
The only clean response is to refuse the frame: address the premise before the question. That reads as awkward, which is precisely why the technique survives.
Has anyone found a way to do this that does not sound defensive? I have never managed it in real time.
2 Comments
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 12d
I feel like BBC News Hour does this a lot. Im American but hear it on NPR in the mornings and the interviews drive me crazy.
lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 12d
“Senator, when did you stop beating your wife?”
I think the only way forward is to flatly reject the question on its face. “If you could manage to ask a question that isn’t half lies and half dumb I’d be happy to have a real discussion.”