Last night, Washington Post's The Trail reported that the CNN-YouTube Republican Debate is a go for November 28th. It is still unclear which candidates will be participating. Winner of this weekend's Iowa straw poll and frontrunner du jour, Mitt Romney is yet to confirm participation and quick to object to the format. "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman," says Romney.
Mr. Romney: Viralroots says you gotta go along to get along. Make no mistake, this election will be decided by a series of tubes.
There's been a lot of buzz lately about whether the Republican CNN-YouTube Debate is going to get canned. That would be a shame. I think it's really important to see both parties participate in this platform, which is clearly a breakthrough component of election politics 2.0. Just this morning on KFI AM640's Bill Handel Show, they were claiming that it looked like Ron Paul was the only Republican candidate committed to participate as of today. They did not cite sources. But just yesterday The Hollywood Reporter reported that Ron Paul, Tommy Thompson and John McCain were on board. Also yesterday, Washingtonpost.com's The Trail included Mike Huckabee as a participant as well. And then there's the possibility of CNN postponing the debate until more candidates agree to participate. We will continue to keep you posted on this matter.
A few weeks ago, if I remember this right, Scoble was quoting someone who was quoting someone else who was asserting that we are on the verge of major backlash against the blogosphere. That amateur citizen journalism is doomed because of it's inherent lack of fact checking and journalistic ethics. I initially wrote it off because it seems all the "news breaking" is done by entertainment and gossip blogs (which doesn't really count because what's really the difference between legit pictures of Britney's cooch and bogus reports of Sinbad's death?), and everything else is merely high-horse opinion, right? Well, then came the Great Goatse Hoax Of 2007. See, I was really impressed that CNN and the candidates would open themselves up to the people for a debate. And I thought it was an impressive show. It would be a shame if it was somehow "hacked." And then I looked at today's search traffic landings for Viralroots and it was strange that searches for "CNN-YouTube Debate" had "Goatse" strung along them. So I investigated. And I immediately found this Digg claiming that a goatse pic was spliced into a YouTube question and was shown on live on CNN for 1/24 of a second. And then I saw that even Wonkette was reporting this. So it must be true, right? Well... no. Not even. Just for LOLs, a blog created this hoax and some of the biggest political sites actually started reporting it as news. Since then, Wonkette has posted a correction, but this should be a major lesson. And it looks like the drive-by-media scores a point here, cuz not for nothing, I can't find a single legit news source reporting this story. The actual video as aired on CNN is above. As you can see, it contains no objectionable frames.
The CNN-YouTube Democratic Debate starts in roughly 30 minutes. That should be just enough time to watch all 3000 questions submitted by YouTube Users. Watch the Debate live at cnn.com.
The much anticipated CNN-YouTube debate is tonight. Many are anticipating the debate to change the way we look at political participation. Hollywood Reporter Reports:
"It's the beginning of everybody figuring out what the role of new media is in the election process," said David Bohrman, CNN's Washington bureau chief and the executive producer of the debate. It's Bohrman's job to assemble the CNN campaign set, clear the technological hurdles of having made-for-Web video and audio translate into TV and, with a team of CNN staffers and moderator Anderson Cooper, decide which questions will make it to air.
"Literally anyone, anywhere has a chance to ask a question," Bohrman said. "They're unlike any questions posed to presidential candidates before."
A glance at YouTube, where the nearly 2,000 videos have been collected since June, proves it. The questions range from such serious topics as education, health care, global warming and energy policy to the kind of offbeat, humorous clips that YouTube is famous for. One pair from Tennessee, Jackie and Dunlap from RedStateUpdate.com, challenge Sens. John Edwards and Barack Obama to take off their shirts to see who is more buff.
Going into the debate, CNN puts Hillary Clinton ahead as the obvious frontrunner. Today's Rasmussen poll concurs, placing Hillary Clinton far out front at 38% followed by Barack Obama at a post-hype 25% and John Edwards at 14%.
Despite the format change incorporating YouTube into this debate, a Rasmussen Reports article suggests that the debates have little impact as polling shows that "46% of voters believe that the Democrats will end up nominating a white male in 2008."
As far as coverage goes, there's nothing on YouTube suggesting that they'll be streaming the debate live. A stream should be available at cnn.com. also DailyKOS is reporting that they have press passes and will be streaming coverage as the debate goes live. Their plan is for a panel of political bloggers to do live commentary from the spin room broadcasted over Ustream.tv.
Last night, Washington Post's The Trail reported that the CNN-YouTube Republican Debate is a go for November 28th. It is still unclear which candidates will be participating. Winner of this weekend's Iowa straw poll and frontrunner du jour, Mitt Romney is yet to confirm participation and quick to object to the format. "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman," says Romney.
