The CNN YouTube Debate: Not the Disaster I Expected

From the time I first heard about CNN's plan to host a presidential debate built around questions submitted via YouTube, I was anticipating a train wreck. Surely, the questions would be silly and uninformed, and the candidates would be baffled by the "folksiness" of those posing the questions, if not by the Extreme Technology of YouTube.

But my expectations were way off base. This actually worked. Leave it to Anderson Cooper to turn my nightmare into ~~a dream come true~~ less of a nightmare.

There were gutsy, difficult questions. There was some serious, hard-core debating going on. Yes, there were also a few moments of insane rambling (thank you, Mike Gravel). Yes, a few of the candidates addressed their answers to the big monitor from which the YouTube questions were broadcast -- as if the questioner was standing by on the screen via live remote. And yes, the sound on the YouTube videos was pretty crappy. But it was not a train wreck.

I've struggled a lot lately with how the news media is trying so hard to be infotainment rather than NEWS. How they're shuffling anchors and competing for ratings and dumbing down their coverage and making things like The War in Iraq or The Presidential Race more of a reality show than a news story. And I thought the CNN YouTube debate would be the pinnacle of this infotainment nonsense. In a way, maybe it was -- but not nearly to the extent that I expected.

Maybe I'm part of the problem here. Maybe I'm one of the people expecting to be entertained when I turn on the news. I don't think of myself that way, but I do change channels based on the personality of certain anchors and reporters (I'm talking about you, Today Show people). I watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. And I tuned in to watch the CNN YouTube debate largely because of the hype -- not because I was all that interested in what the candidates would say.

Crap. I'm not just part of the problem.

I am the problem.

MamaPop™