On Thursday night, ABC News broadcast an hourlong “town hall” meeting with President Obama to address a recent wave of shooting tragedies that include the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile as well as of five police officers in Dallas. The broadcast was well-intentioned in the extreme, and though the production was heavily stage-managed by ABC News, anchor David Muir took a backseat to the President and citizens. But that was the broadcast’s problem: The town hall format, beholden to its participants’ whim rather than a guiding vision, was neither effective news nor opinion programming.