In another example of traditional journalists experimenting with participatory media, Chuck Todd, NBC's White House Correspondent, is gathering questions from citizens in preparation for Tuesday's prime time press conference with President Barack Obama.
Todd is soliciting question ideas from blog commenters, both through Newsvine.com and a plug on MSNBC's First Read, and he will also look over some of the top questions voted by citizens at Ask The President, (which I just launched in a partnership with The Nation, PDF and The Washington Times). Addressing Newsvine readers, Todd explained:
I'd like question ideas from you for the president next Tuesday night... But I don't necessarily want the question ideas DIRECTLY from you, I want to hear what your neighbors and less politics-obsessed friends and family want asked... I know every reporter claims they are listening to you and I'm not going to promise that I'm going to use a direct question but I do view these prime time press conferences as vehicles for the public...
In response to Ask The President, which enables a more accountable process for transparent voting and question submission by video and text, Todd emailed me asking us to "send ideas" his way. "I'm soliciting question ideas from a wide variety of sources and do want to ask a 'kitchen table' question on Tuesday," he added.
To be crystal clear, neither Todd nor NBC have signed up as formal partners with Ask The President. (Our coalition now spans newspapers, magazines, blogs, non-partisan organizations and large membership groups, but still no television outlets.) And as Todd stressed to his readers, he is not promising to use a citizen question on Tuesday. USA Today also solicited questions for Obama from readers on Monday, though there is no suggestion that the exercise will inform the paper's contact with the White House.
Simply opening up the public discussion of how the media questions the President, however, already helps advance more accountability and transparency in media-government relations. In my new article on The People's Press Conference, I argue that even if the press does not initially rush to use citizen questions, these public discussions can demonstrate "trends, input and ideas to guide journalists on an ongoing basis." And while it is a fine gesture for journalists to casually invite reader questions, as Todd and ABC's Jake Tapper have recently done via blogs and Twitter, we have the platforms to engage much broader, deeper participation:
Some Washington reporters have begun informally soliciting a wider range of questions for their work... David Gregory, host of NBC's Meet the Press, and Jake Tapper, ABC's senior White House correspondent, are experimenting with the micromessage site Twitter to gather input for their interviews with government officials. On March 3 Tapper tapped a bulletin to his Twitter network, in the informal style common on the site, inviting questions for the daily briefings: "didnt get to it today but consider this a standing invite for good q suggestions for gibbs."
These forays are positive, if they reflect a genuine receptivity to deeper citizen input in journalism and government accountability. Yet they offer no reliable metrics for pooling or assessing public priorities. They are not transparent, either, since there is no unified structure displaying how many people drafted questions, or what other citizens think of them, or whether a reporter's selected questions are representative of those submitted. As a largely one-way circuit, such efforts are less likely to foster public debate or spark sustained citizen participation.
I think using open submission and voting platforms -- as President-elect Obama did during the transition, but not since -- is superior:
Few traditional mechanisms, however, capture the public's active interests--empowering people to draft their own ideas, concerns and questions from scratch. Generating and debating new questions is fundamentally different from picking among a scripted menu ... And virtually no traditional media mechanisms couple that original, individual production with transparent, national voting. Doing both can broaden the issues under public discussion while weighting their priority according to public input--a useful service for our body politic.
We don't know if the press or the White House will begin opening up this week, but if the public keeps pressing, it should only be a matter of time.
--
To submit and vote on potential questions for President Obama through our project, which has already gathered over 28,000 votes in five days, visit Ask The President now.
To learn more about the project, check out these articles from The Nation and The Washington Times. (This post originally ran in The Nation.)
To read a response to some input and criticism of the project, see this blog comment.
And to see a YouTuber taking up the challenge, check out this new video:
Asking the President: "why aren't you asking for something specific that the public can sacrifice to participate in this economic recovery?" What was Chuck Todd thinking ... what sacrifices does Chuck Todd feel the public should make?
A comparison would be if one asked of the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan ... what "sacrifices" are they willing to make to participate in the war on terror. No one would ever ask this of a soldier.
The American people are the "soldiers" in this economic war ... and the disgraceful ignorance of Chuck Todd's question insults all of us who have lost their jobs, their medical coverage, their pensions, and their hope for the future ... that "our" sacrifice isn't "good enough". How dare he!
What are your plans to deal with short-selling? Can our economy ever maintain steady economic growth when we are incentivising failure by allowing this short-selling to take place? It goes totally against the trickle up theory... a few heavy traders can get rich off of short selling a company into bankrupcy due to lack of capital... the few heavy traders get rich beyond all reason and productive employees at that company get laid off. How is short-selling ever a good thing for our economy?
He was overlooked for Meet the Press.
He was overlooked for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (and to add to the insult, he doesn't even replace David Schuster when David Schuster has to fill in for Keith Olberman)
Personally, I agree with MSNBC choices. Even Ed Schultz (love him, he is so honest) fills in for David Schuster on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I think MSNBC will eventually get rid of him and put him behind the scenes like Dan Abrams.
Personally, I think Chuck Todd is good for number crunching when elections role around; not really impressed with anything he does. How about you?
The same holds for Andrea Mitchell, I guess. She also has been overlooked. Agree?
Chuck Todd HATES New media, and when Cenk told him who he worked for, Chuck scoffed at him and walked the other way.
This was at the RNC convention, Cenk said not another MSM was rude to him (acutally Greta was)
Why shouldn't Geithner require banks to submit a BAILOUT REORGANIZATION PLAN, using (as a template) Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. If Banks’ creditors would receive more under the PLAN than they would receive by bank liquidation, then they should accept less than 100% of the debt owed to them. There is no reason for taxpayers to sacrifice, while banks pay 100 cents on the dollar to their creditors. Why shouldn’t the banks, and their creditors, sacrifice too?
Using the Code* as a template, here’s a simple structure that bankruptcy courts have approved for years:
1. EMPLOYEES’ SALARIES: pay 100%
2. EMPLOYEES’ BONUSES: pay 90% (or less)
3. EXECUTORY (existing) CONTRACTS: first, determine whether to honor the executory contract and, if so, pay 80%-100% (depending on the contract): then if it is in the best interest of the bank to cancel the contract, place the claim of that canceled creditor in the class with unsecured creditors below.
4. SECURED CREDITORS: if the value of the asset securing the debt is greater than the debt, pay 100% of the debt. If the asset value securing the debt is less than the debt, then; (a) split the debt into two parts, secured and unsecured, (b) pay 100% of the secured portion, and (c) place the unsecured portion in the class with unsecured creditors below.
5. UNSECURED CREDITORS: pay 75%, or less, of the unsecured creditors’ claims.
*See 11 USC Sections 507, 502, and 1122-1126.
It paid off for David Gregory who is now "hosting" (destroying) Meet the Press.
As long as we have 80% of our media owned by conservatives, we will continue to have the mess we have now. That's why I totally ignore all media outlets except for the Internet. It is the only source of new/comment that the conservatives can't control.
Most of them s t i n k in their private lives, believe me. Joe Scarborough is yet to explain how a young girl who worked in his political campaign d i e d mysteriously before he decided to "resign" to take "care of his family".
How is a corporation a "person..?"