Questions are given in advance for the North Mayor’s Debate! Senior anchor Liao Fangjie reveals past experience: losing the meaning of media questions

The first Taipei mayoral election televised debate co-sponsored by TVBS and Sanli ended yesterday (31st). However, the "pre-questions" during the media question-and-answer session triggered discussions from all walks of life. Senior anchor Liao Fangjie, who had served as a questioner at TV debates in the past, said that at that time, "there was no such thing as pre-questions." She bluntly said that the practice of giving questions in advance this time "kind of lost the meaning of media questions."

Regarding the topic of "pre-questioning" in the Taipei mayoral election televised debate, Fan Qiming, deputy manager of the TVBS News Department, confirmed that in this Taipei mayoral debate, TVBS and Sanli first asked questions to the media people from the Chiang Wanan and Shen Boyang camps. This was the consensus of the organizers and the two camps during the coordination process of the two debates. TVBS and Sanli TV media questioners were each responsible for formulating a question for Chiang and Shen to prepare first. Jiang Wanan's camp has the problem of winning Sanli and TVBS, and Shen Boyang's camp has the same problem of winning TVBS and Sanli.

Senior anchor Liao Fangjie, who served as the questioner at the 2024 presidential election debate, posted an article on Threads today (1st) recalling that when she was the questioner, the organizer did not ask her to provide questions in advance, "even the questioners did not know each other's questions." As the third questioner at the time, she prepared 6 questions and had to adapt to changes on stage. Therefore, she had to "secretly get angry at the colleague who was ahead of me for asking me the question I wanted to ask the most while reorganizing my own question." She also had to finish the question within the allotted 1 minute, which made her exclaim, "It's really thrilling."

Liao Fangjie believed that she did not know why the two host media provided the question content in advance this time. She knew privately that it was based on "precedent", but she questioned "how this precedent came about." Although both the blue and green camps got it, it was still fair, but she could not help but bluntly said that "the meaning of the media's questions was a bit lost."