Announcement: A General Election Presidential Forum
Though the primary season is still in full swing, we've been looking ahead to the general election, too. Today, we're announcing a presidential forum for the candidates this September in New Orleans, Louisiana. Partnering with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, and The New Orleans Consortium (a collection of nonprofit and educational institutions in New Orleans), we'll host a live televised discussion about the issues critical to America's future. See our video announcement here:
YouTube and Google will power the event, and allow you to engage in the discussion through video and other means. In the coming months we'll announce just how you can get involved. Stay tuned to Citizentube to find out more...
2 comments:
Have you ever heard hype about a new band, and when you listen to them it's just elevator music?
Youtube's "debates" are like that. The "debate" will be like the CNN/Youtube "debate", featuring puffball after puffball which the candidates will simply answer with their stock speeches. And, whoever the moderators are won't call them on their lies or press for a followup.
Youtube is already telegraphing what they're going to do by featuring the superlightweight James Kotecki, someone who wouldn't know a tough question if it fell on his head.
Not only that, but their example of a user-generated question is someone asking "do you think your personal qualities will allow you to be an effective president"?
What does anyone expect the answer to be, "no"?
If I were Youtube, I'd watch out: the questions they're going to allow to be asked might give Sergey Brin Soviet Union flashbacks.
Let me light a candle by offering this proposal. The only way to avoid a repeat of the CNN disasters is to have bloggers and the like vote on the questions. They'll be charged with selecting the *toughest* questions, not the ones they want answered or anything else. And, their votes for each video will be public. So, if they vote up weak videos or vote down tough videos then they can be held accountable by their readers. And, the votes could be sliced and diced by who voted in which categories, a specific blogger's votes, etc.
On the plus side for Google, this would also cause more people to visit whatever site they host that at because the bloggers could link to a list of their votes.
And, this would also give Google plausible deniability when those tough questions get asked and the candidates get angry: it was the bloggers that selected the questions, not Google.
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