I think the Youtube debates are a really good thing for U.S. and our electoral process. I was watching the Youtube/CNN Republican debate last night and really enjoyed hearing their responses to questions like “What measures will you take to tackle the national debt?” and “How many guns do you own?” I kept thinking: Wow, this is so much better than the FOX News Republican debate with softball questions like the hypothetical terrorist situation that drove candidates to double Guantanamo and call in Jack Bauer to save America.
And today I read a SF Chronicle article about the debates which quoted some new media analysts whining about the Youtube forum.
Like this quote:
“It seemed more like CNN was picking and choosing the questions for their dramatic effect,” said Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, which studies new media and politics and who was in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. “They wanted fireworks, and they got them.”
Of course they are picking and choosing! It’s still television!
“This is where CNN’s process is a bit mystifying to me,” said Micah Sifry, co-founder of Personal Democracy Forum and editor of techPresident.com, which explores the use of technology in the White House race. “Why weren’t these questions (about health care and the environment) asked?”
Because it’s the Republican debate and health care and environment are not part of the evaluative criteria! Is Sifry serious?
Other analysts wonder whether this melding of Internet technology with a televised debate is nothing more than what a Huffington Post commentator called “faux populism.” … As Marty Kaplan, research professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication wrote on Huffington Post last week, “The 4,000+ videos are pawns; the questioners are involuntary shills, deployed by the network producers in no less deliberate, calculating and manipulative a fashion as the words and stories fed by teleprompters into anchors’ mouths.”
This is too much. I want to enact a new mantra. Before whining about some new media, ask: is this new thing really so bad or is it actually better than what came before it? Is there anything that could possibly satisfy my exacting criteria for the perfect medium without losing 99% of America’s attention?
November 30, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Mike your discussion is right on target. I try not to watch TV around election time.
November 30, 2007 at 7:55 pm
I liked the variety of answers to question 19 (whether the candidates believed every word in The Bible) with the complex answers of Giuliani and Huckabee and the simple (and crowd pleasing) answer of Romney. It reminded me of our current President’s answer to who was his favorite political philosopher. The people’s questions are hardballs and the answers are revealing.
December 2, 2007 at 9:11 pm
I thought the questions were much harder than a standard journalist-run debate. It was interesting.