SubscribeReality Bites: The YouTube/CNN debate
Posted in IPTV, Television, Citizen Journalism, Internet, News on July 28th, 2007. By Maren Hermans.
What was supposed to be a debate on politics turned into a debate on journalism and multimedia. Does ‘broadcast yourself’ mean to participate in a political debate, and what is the role of traditional journalism in the relation between politician and voter?
‘It seemed the network was afraid to show the videos full-screen because they would not look like real TV. But, of course, that’s just the point. They weren’t real TV. They were bits of conversation.’
Jeff Jarvis writes in his blog. And therewith he summarizes the problem of the debate: Where-else CNN worked in a typical broadcasting way, presenting the candidates as stiff puppets, hold together by a rigid anchor man, the YouTube videos were very different in their amateurism, in their spontaneity and sometimes quirkiness. Presentation versus Conversation. Reality bites in the artificiality of the studio. Accompanied by a lot of other dichotomies: old versus new, pro versus am, big versus little. Kevin Marsh calls it:
‘[…] a clash between two media cultures; old-style ‘big journalism’ and new-style ‘citizen media’.
And ‘old style’ still wrote the script: the selection of the videos by gatekeeper CNN once again underlined the editorial role of professional journalism. But a Wired article informs:
‘Democratic voters will have a chance to increase their level of participation in current political debates in just over a week. Several of the Democratic presidential candidates have agreed to answer questions from bloggers and activists at this year’s YearlyKos convention in Chicago.’
Maybe then the debate was not very necessary in its political content, not very original in its approach, and maybe the answers of politicians were same as usual. But it offered a glimpse into a political future where a public debate is easier to access for both, politicians and people.
No Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL