Youtube+CNN: Smoke and Mirrors
Wonder how many people were tricked into thinking the Youtube/CNN debate was an experiment or the new face of democracy? (It was neither.)
If the idea that individuals can ask potential leaders questions is revolutionary then we are in more trouble than I thought. (That is all it was, the videos were simply a gimmick.)
Update: Jeff Jarvis agrees.
Well the question were not any worse then when purely coming from Journalist.
The candidate videos where bad.
I giggled at “text for peace”. They all seemed angry to me when not trying to pretend to be presidential.
Now if the YouTube community had been able to rank and therefore pick the the exact questions used, that might have been more interesting.
I completely agree with Shlok but slightly disagree with purpleslog. I think instead of having some larger body decide what sort of questions were asked, it would be far more interesting if there was little to no screening of the questions – maybe there would be some new, more interesting discussion.
Still, it is all pretty lame since the candidates neither answer questions they don’t want to answer nor do they engage in substantial debate with one another. The debate is just a fancy press conference.