See What’s Out There

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Mainstream media spends a lot of time trying to be more relevant in our world of unlimited online channels. So in this context I can excuse people for being skeptical that the CNN - YouTube debate was anything more than a gimmick. If you are unfamiliar with this, the idea was that instead of the moderator asking questions, YouTube users would submit videos that ask the questions.

The debate aired on CNN tonight and I just finished watching in online in my living room on CNN.com with my wife Jessica. (Why the video of the debate wasn’t also on YouTube, I don’t know. CNN has a very annoying player that required me to download a new plug-in.) Some criticism before the debate, particularly from Jeff Jarvis, was that CNN shouldn’t be deciding which videos to show. In this way, he and others argued, CNN was simply replacing questions they would ask with the same questions being asked by YouTubers. What these critics wanted was that the most popular question videos on YouTube be the ones they show at the debate. CNN argued that if they did that then the candidates might try to manipulate the popularity of the questions online. I would add that we would probably have had 30 questions about health care.

In the end, I think CNN made the right choice and I think this was a much better debate than usual. Jeff Jarvis thinks it sucked. He says that an online debate, with the candidates responding directly to the videos would have been better. Probably. And you have to agree with his point about the “horse race blather” from the commentators after the debate ended. This might be baby steps, but it is certainly steps.

Michael Bassik, an authority about all of this from MSHC Parnters, was quoted in the New York Times as saying it was less about which questions are picked and more about simply giving people a voice that don’t have in the traditional debate format. After seeing it, I agree.

Jessica said it’s all about stories. The videos became real reality check stories. At one point, John Edwards told us about a man he met on his recent poverty tour with a medical problem — a cleft pallet that he didn’t get fixed until he was 50 years old. This story, stuck in the can by Edwards before the debate and pulled out to show he is in touch with real people, seemed totally hollow to those of us watching from the couch. It didn’t have any impact because minutes before he told his story we saw videos of adult kids feeding their mother with Alzheimer’s and a woman taking her wig off and talking about being denied preventative care because she didn’t have health insurance.

Yes, there were too many candidates. And Dennis Kucinich has to be the most annoying candidate that ever ran. And there is never enough time. But millions of Americans saw this video. And I think that really is a difference.

The Obama campaign is doing great things with video that every organization should be doing. They are documenting his travels and speeches. They are interviewing supporters and making short films about supporters and their issues — all in addition to more traditional advertising. Have a look at a couple videos they did around a contest for a donor to have dinner with Senator Obama:

What I like about this piece from James Kotecki and David McMillan is how a couple of guys can contribute to the presidential conversation while demonstrating how you can create effective media on a no budget. According to Jeff Jarvis on his site PrezVid, these guys haven’t even met in person and they are creating a show together. Yes, the lighting and sound could be improved, but it works.

I had a conversation recently with a community activist about politics and the web. This person told me that the behind-the-scenes phone calls and pressures, public meetings and traditional press were still how they did their work — and quite successfully. My thought was, “Sure, it works and it will keep working, but you ignore the web at your own peril.”

Two things that made me think about the web and politics today. I saw Al Gore on the Daily Show. (He was excellent — relaxed, funny, knowledgeable, compelling.) One thing he mentioned was how the web was beginning to become a check on the lame political coverage of the mainstream media. Traditional media might ignore an issue, but the web is all over it. And this pressure from the bloggers acts as a feedback loop to the press, a loop that we never had before. Gore suggested that if the net was as powerful six years ago as it was today, that maybe we wouldn’t have had so many yes votes for the Iraq war because the press would have been pressured to tell the American people more directly that Iraq was not responsible for 9-11 (which 70% of Americans believed and 50% still believe.)

The other item that got me thinking politics today was the most recent column from David Pogue. He stumbled upon a website called MAPLight.org. What they do is connect money given to politicians directly to the votes those politicians make. So for example, you can look up a bill, see which groups supported it and which groups opposed it, then see which of those groups gave money to which politicians and then connect the dots to how those politicians voted. This is all public information, but the web is making it much easier to connect the dots.

Pogue writes:

Now, not all bills exhibit the same money-to-outcome relationships. And it’s not news that our lawmakers’ campaigns accept money from special interests. What this site does, however, is to expose, often embarrassingly, how that money buys votes.

I probably sound absurdly naive here. But truth is, I can’t quite figure out why these contributions are even legal. Let the various factions explain their points till they’re blue in the face, sure — but to cut checks for millions of dollars?

And I think that as more of this information becomes easy to track, more people are going to demand reform and explanations from their representatives. You can watch MAPLight’s video tour here.

Continuing to jump on the political bandwagon, MySpace recently announced a series of in-person events that it will host on college campuses with presidential aspirants. This report from CNET also says MySpace is working with Mark Burnett (Survivor) on something called Independent “a new program that uses television and the web to discover budding political minds.”

Keeping with my recent political theme… I saw on the site of Ron Paul, the Republican presidential candidate, video he mashed up from the debate. I was thinking… can he do that? Is it Fair Use? Did he get permission or pay? MSNBC putout some crazy rules for their debate footage, saying it couldn’t be used on the internet basically. Yeah right. Joe Biden ignored them, and I would also because there is no way they are going after a presidential candidate with a cease and desist order.

Then I just saw this from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

* CNN To Free Debate Footage for Remixing, Re-Use

When the presidential debates are aired by CNN on June 3rd and 5th, the public will be able to edit, remix, parody and publish the footage — without worrying about copyright violation. CNN has pledged to make debate footage available to the public “without restriction.” [Here’s the link to CNN’s press release on the subject.]

CNN’s decision comes on the heels of an open letter from a broad coalition of scholars, public advocates, and Internet entrepreneurs calling for the release of all debate footage under a Creative Commons license. Several major candidates have also joined the call.

This fight isn’t over yet, however. Not all future debates will be hosted by CNN. If MSNBC’s rules concerning re-use of footage of the May 3rd debate footage get picked up by other stations, some of the important discourse concerning the election of our next President will remain locked up by big media companies.

In a meeting with a major nonprofit this week, I was asked about the tension and issues related to Web 2.0 and losing control of content. It’s the magic question. How do we take advantage of user-generated content and user-controlled forums such as MySpace and YouTube without totally losing control of our brand? The answer is, very very carefully.

Even the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, which has put big resources into these issues couldn’t escape serious problems. Their case is special, however. There are laws about having people doing things on behalf of the campaign — either they are “on-the-books” and you as the campaign have to account for everything they say and do, or they are totally “off-the-books” and you can’t even talk to them without fear of breaking federal election laws.

The Obama MySpace page was originally created by a volunteer, and originally didn’t say “official site”. It then grew and grew and grew and the campaign wanted — needed — to take it over and control it. Some of the info on the site wasn’t right, for example. This was not a random fan site, but the one MySpace page with his name in the URL. The person who created it then wanted to get paid for all the work he had done. Not happening. They should have spent the money and kept the fan. Now they have people running around all over the web calling them bullies.

You can read all about it on the techPresident blog.