Christina M. Smith has an excellent piece at CommonDreams.org about the use of framing questions to slant the presidential debates. She gives an example of Wolf Blitzer using a conservative frame in a question to Barack Obama. In this case, the framing didn't work.
"BLITZER: I want you to raise your hand if you believe English should be the official language of the United States.
"OBAMA: This is the kind of question that is designed precisely to divide us. ... The issue is not whether or not future generations of immigrants are going to learn English. The question is: How can we come up with both a legal, sensible immigration policy?"
But far too often the framing works to steer the "debate" into predetermined paths.
Nearly 2 years ago, I tackled the same thing in a piece entitled "Words, Words, Words" for Swans, an online magazine. In it, I said:
"...words are the most important thing in the public's perception of politics and everything else that is important. Whoever chooses the language frames the debate.
"Let's start with the most basic political division -- conservative versus liberal. When did liberal become a four-letter word? When I was a youth, a liberal was as proud of his heritage as a conservative was of his. (but) liberals became timid and defensive and eventually began running from the label. And yet, if you don't use the word liberal, most Americans support the liberal position on a host of things -- public education, progressive taxation, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, environmental protection, civil rights for minorities, the United Nations, and the observance of international law.
"...If you call it "welfare reform," you can pretty well destroy the system. Critics are reduced to sputtering that perhaps the reform went too far, instead of pointing out that calling it "reform" is a grotesque lie. If progressives could choose the language and make it stick we could "reform" the War Department -- euphemistically called the Defense Department -- to half its present size and save trillions of dollars."
If you want to read to the whole article on Swans, go to
http://www.swans.com/library/art11/rdeck050.h