Watching the CNN YouTube debate

I’m watching the CNN-YouTube debate between the Democratic candidates for president, live on CNN now. (It’s also being streamed live on CNN.com.)

I really do like the format, where more than 3,000 people from around the world — I was one of them — posed questions to the candidates. YouTubers will have a go at the Republican candidates during their debate on Sept. 17. I think this format is here to stay — there’s no turning back. Congrats to YouTube on this important evolution in our national political dialogue.

The questions are much more interesting, thoughtful and incisive — involving race relations, gay rights, Darfur, Hurricane Katrina, and, of course, the Iraq War — than many of the questions typically posed by the political press corps. Because of the unpredictable nature of the questions, the candidates’ answers were unscripted and more spontaneous and interesting than the usual nonsense.   

Here are the 39 video questions that made it into the debate. (The audio sucks in some of these thanks to the shitty Flash transcoding on YouTube.)

I think Jeff Jarvis and others are off the mark when they say that CNN ought to ask only the videos rated most popular by YouTube’s viewers. CNN has it right — it chose a good selection of questions (that’s part of a news organization’s job) and showed a few of the more entertaining but frivolous ones, like the top-rated video about Schwarzenegger being a cyborg from the future. It would have been fun to pose that to the candidates, but with a limited amount of time, isn’t it more important to pose questions about the vital issues facing the world?

This combination of grassroots democracy and traditional journalism strikes me as the right balance.

Some interesting nuggets:

• Joe Biden singling out Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel as possible Republican members of his administration.

• John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are both doing well so far. Edwards is effective with his call for big change against big powerful corporate interests. (I really do like Edwards, whom I met a year ago at Gnomedex.)

• Clever 30-second spot by Edwards (all the candidates’ campaigns did a 30-second video), featuring   music from "Hair," and asking, "What really matters?" (Above.)

• I like Joe Biden’s fire (and anger) over Iraq. Hillary’s just unflappable.

• Barack Obama (who has a big cheering base here, seems to be stumbling in some of his answers. Needs to smooth out his delivery. Cool candidate video (unlike Biden’s, which resembled a typical TV commercial).

• Best line of the night, by Joe Biden in response to a guy who wielded a gun and called it "his baby": "I’ll tell you what, if that’s his baby, he needs help."

• Dennis Kucinich’s a bit flaky, as usual. We can get our troops out of Iraq by texting? Yup! "Text peace, at text 73223 text peace."

Other reactions and previews:

Jeff Jarvis has this — Why the YouTube debae matters— and is live-blogging the debate at PrezVid. His overall analysis gives it a thumbs down. I disagree — seemed like a refreshing change of pace. (And Jeff, how can you complain one day about CNN’s decision not to ask the candidates only the top-rated YouTube video questions, and then complain tonight when CNN did air a couple of the top-rated videos in a way that showed why they wouldn’t strictly abide by users’ ratings?)

Techmeme: YouTube users take on the Democratic presidential candidates.

Other bloggers’ thoughts on the debate are here. A lot of favorable reaction. Eg: awesome and "it was the best debate ever!  finally politicians are trying to reach out to our generation."

Interesting (though not surprising) that all the pundits on CNN declared Clinton the winner, while the focus group in New Hampshire gave the nod to Obama and the one in Nevada to Clinton and Richardson.

Later: A day later, I still think the debate was a significant evolutionary — though not revolutionary — tep forward. CNN made almost no use of the Internet’s possibilities for interactivity. Still, the questions were better than those posed by political journalists, who too often focus on gotcha questions or the trivial.

San Francisco Chronicle: YouTube steals the Democratic debate

It might have been the first debate in which the questions — 39 chosen from 2,989 submitted — were more important than the answers. They provided a peek into a new media landscape, which can shape opinions well after the initial broadcast.

San Jose Mercury News: YouTube makes debate personal.

   Advertised as a debate  that would be different, it mostly lived up to its billing.

With YouTube users submitting video questions that were culled by CNN
news producers, the discussion was more vibrant, poignant and prompted
by some of the toughest questions asked yet about the Iraq war, race,
same-sex marriage, health care, gun ownership and nuclear power. …

For the first time you
got a sense of what the American people are thinking, not a
talking-head journalist," said Zennie Abraham, an Oakland video blogger
whose video question appeared in a portion of the debate focused on
religion. …

"Video allows that personal exchange that leads to a real window on how
these candidates are real people," said Abraham, who had submitted a
half-dozen videos.

Experts predicted that Monday’s novel debate, melding live television
with YouTube video, will be copied. CNN and YouTube have already
committed to hold a similar debate for Republicans in September.

John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and
Society at Harvard Law School said he "was impressed by how different
it was. I don’t think we saw a sea change in a single event, but this
will have some long-term impact. It will affect how debates are done in
the future."

While the candidates didn’t cover a lot of new ground on the issues,
they responded with more candor, emotion and humor, observers said. Not
surprisingly, many of those on video were young, not your typical
presidential debate crowd, those observers added.

"The bar for tonight was crossed. Would, from the bottom up, swell
tough-minded questions? Would the candidates respond any differently?
I’m not sure there was that big a difference in their answers, but
seeing a woman with cancer pull her wig off, kids in Darfur, and two
gay lovers snuggling – it had an emotional, visceral impact and the
candidates couldn’t just shirk off the questions," said Peter Leyden,
director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think
tank that advises progressive candidates on use of new media.

 

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.