YouTube Debate: Politics of Verisimilitude

When CNN and YouTube collaboratively provided a platform for netizens to interrogate US presidential candidates on Monday, it heralded a novelty in the history/future of the media. It was the first ever video-questioning of the running horses by the public through a social networking site, and, the telecast of the same by the traditional media, lending a sense of immediacy and a streak of naturalness to the otherwise-reality-show. Here, the second part of the description (sense of immediacy…streak of naturalness) of CNN-YouTube surreal show is an initial uncensored thought and hence could be vague.
Politics apart, the collaboration of new media with the old has presented us a phenomenon requiring some thought. While hailing the foray of social networking site into the active political realm as a defining moment comparable to the impact of television on politics when Richard Nixon debated John Kennedy during 1960 presidential elections, the liaison of old and the new media has been interpreted in many ways even within the media fraternity.
To borrow the coinage of The Sydney Morning Herald, “Old media are entering into an uneasy alliance with new media to grill the Democratic candidates in the US presidential race”. Certainly, the expression here echoes a sense of insecurity and a fear of the new among the traditional media.
New York Times wrote, “Yet while there was a new format for the debate, which was sponsored by CNN and the video-sharing Web site YouTube, the change went only so far: Candidates frequently lapsed into their talking points, and there was little actual debate among them”.
CNN-YouTube presidential debate is a path-breaking phenomenon merely of its novelty and not because of its ability to impact the way of the old media. That is to say, it failed to redefine the relationship of the performer (presidential candidates, in this case) and the audience (TV viewers) so as to liberate the latter from the shackles of the traditional media. On the contrary, it brought a section of the audience (cybercitizens) within the ambit of the old media and imposed `editorial judgment’ on them. Bringing people out of their closet and subjecting them to the scanner of the camera is in a way reinforcing the authority of the old media.
The event could not do away with the moderator, the media interface between the people and the candidates. It was just a surrealistic show creating an impression among the public that they were directly engaging the presidential candidates, little realising that it was instead them who were being `watched’ and hence `interrogated’.
Of more than 2,000 video questions that were posted on YouTube for the debate, only 37 could confirm to the editorial judgment of the CNN editors (who, of course, are bound by time). Elimination of rest of the questions and the `editorial discretion’ exercised by the professionally regulated old media while choosing `appropriate’ voter videos nullified the very essence of the amateurishly free new media at one go. The rest was just the continuation of any other presidential debates on the television involving a moderator who struggles hard to contain the oratory of the candidates so as not to exceed the timeline.
It is surely a change from the days when only the people used to watch candidates on their TV screens in their houses to a day where the candidates observe the `voters’ on the screen and study them. The cybercitizens who participated in the YouTube show appeared powerless as they were not provided an opportunity to cross-question the candidates and to engage them in true sense. Instead, their personality and the surrounding came to the full public glare. This lent a sense of immediacy and naturalness to the show which was not true. And centredaily.com is correct in predicting that “The march of citizen video into politics might not have the revolutionary impact that television had a half-century ago - despite predictions of such an upheaval Monday from YouTube's founders”