It is ok to tell them your name and rank.
Expect everything else to be twisted.
Luckily I have never been tested in such a situation, I guess it will be pretty hard to stick to this in the long run.
If there's a solution it's probably something akin to research preregistration.
Let's be honest, you already know that just from the context of the question and which show is doing the interview. If the audience is deceived it's only because they want to be.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/04/08/less-ameri...
(also here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/0...
)
Most people answering a 2014 poll (hopefully uniformly sampled) could not locate Ukraine on a map of the world, with many placing it in Africa, East Asia, Greenland or even the US; but the more interesting part was that the farther from its actual location was people's guess, the more they were supportive of US military intervention in Ukraine.
A couple of people-on-the-street interviews will never ever give you an accurate representation of "a large percentage of the population".
Edit: see also this comment- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29889236
What gets me is how easily inexperienced people are led to saying exactly what the interviewer wants. And it is blatant: they don't even pretend that isn't what they are doing on live news anymore.
