Good question,
Potentially good solutions. It would be more than nice I would suggest good for the nation if these could be implemented.

There are however a few problems preventing or watering down their implementation that come to mind.
Commercial interests (links) would scuttle the idea on commercial TV.
Aunty would be lobbied against at the highest levels'unfair to business' and which poli would be game to potentially make themselves look foolish and blight their careers by such a exposition.

Secondly one wonders if the vast majority of viewers (who the authors solutions are designed to inform) would notice or care.

Finally I think there would be a general boycott of spokespersons on sensitive issues prepared to be interview without pre interview exclusions.

Nice try though.

This is of course a standard component of any media training: segue any question that is posed, into one of the (maximum) three points that you yourself wish to get across during the interview.

"Mr Politician, is it true you have been cheating on your wife?"

"I'm glad you asked me that, Tony, because there is a growing tendency in the opposition ranks to ignore basic family issues - I myself am putting forward a proposal that will benefit all Australian working mothers..." etc etc ad naus.

It is in fact quite fun, "spotting the segue", and giving it marks out of ten for ingenuity and chutzpah. The greater the leap of logic that effects the transfer, the higher the mark awarded.

But there's actually nothing that can seriously be done about it, except to improve the quality of the interviewer. Even then, vested interests of the network concerned will affect the effort that an interviewer will put into the pursuit of an answer.

And put very simply, if the politician or business leader concerned knows that he is in for a hard time, he will simply refuse to appear. The irony of this being that the viewer will blame the "absence" onto the network, not on the politician.

It's just another of life's many tiny little frustrations.

Thanks for that Pericles. You've just taught me something memorable. I recognize what you describe but I didn't know there was some sort of formula to it that people learned.

I'm going to bother now to watch an interview just to try and spot the seque.

Yeah, I've seen quite a few segues in my time. The more patronising they are, the more easy they are to spot.
Senator McGauran's a serial segue-er. He does it while simultaneously expressing a big smile and telling you how important what you've told him is and he'll get right on it, while evading the question entirely. The Nationals have a few of those in their ranks, though that isn't to say the Labor party isn't great at it as well - they usually have more material up their sleeves that they can draw upon, and part of being such a large organisation means they're more effective at passing the buck (or the question, as it may be).

The difficulty for journalists is that politicians favour the press-pack approach, where they can pick the journalist. So a journo will ask a question, the politician will segue their way out of it, then when the journo asks the same question again, the politician can opt for someone else and pretend that he answered it already.

Sit-down interviews are harder to come by. In those cases, the best approach is to be polite, but keep asking the question. Good journalists keep it narrow and focused, and try to present it as a yes-or-no option so after they avoid the question and waffle for a while, they can ask, is that a yes or a no?
When the politician inevitably say it's more complicated than that, a good journo will say, "of course it is, but it still needs to take some form of yes or no - of course, you can elaborate all you like."
The phrase "thank you for that information, but you didn't actually state whether... could you please be more specific?" is also a good 'un. I think more journos need to specifically point out the segue and bring it back around. Lateline are quite good at this at times.

Folks,
I'll admit the solutions are technically possible, but pessimistic about their realistic. The chance of a "ticker line" of the question on commercial TV (if there were commercial current-affairs shows worthy of such a label) is approximately zero.

However, on ABC/SBS, there is no real reason why this could not be done, and if people didn't turn up, the "empty chair" device could be used, or, if only a written response was given, ensure a barely-literate reader did the voiceover.

The shorter the question, and the longer the response, the more practical and useful the "ticker line" is.

But as for where it is MOST useful place for reminding viewers, it would be in "Order in the House"... well maybe we'll have to wait for Maxine to be speaker and given leave to use her skill to say "The member will address the question". Not hopeful there either.

However, the key point that even intelligent listeners, such as the researcher who wrote the paper I referred to, can miss the segue, was worrying.

Maybe we'll have to leave it to shows like "Glasshouse", "Newstopia", "Chaser" and the like.

Dennis Pryor's booklet, "Political Pryorities:
How to get on top of Australian Politics,"
published in 1988 is a satirical dictionary
of Australian politics. In it Pryor describes
"Polspeak," as:

"The verbose, hypocritical, mendacious and
ambiguous language of politicians and their
hangers-on. Its fundamental method is to express
everything so vaguely and densely that polspeakers
can extricate themselves from difficulties by
claiming not to have said what they did in fact
say..."

For example:

"The decision-making process with regard to this
matter is currently in place. It would be improper
for me at this point in time to pre-empt the
eventual outcome as the result of community
consultations, one way or another, of that ongoing
decision and consultative process..."

Journalists need to be experienced enough to deal
with this sort of situation. They need to be fully
prepared, not be intimidated,
have done their research, know the topic
to be discussed, and ask the right questions.
And be persistant.

I've just seen the "Frost/Nixon" film. Frost got
nowhere, until he did his homework, and had the right
questions to ask. He then went in with guns blazing,
and got the response he was after.