CNN / YouTube Debates - My Message To Steve Grove and Dave Bohrman

This video and post present my message to Steve Grove, the News and Politics editor for CNN, and to Dave Bohrman, the Executive Producer of the CNN / YouTube Debates for CNN.



My take is that CNN/YouTube was lucky to realize the ratings record that was set for the debate, and this was achieved for two reasons: 1) the time of year -- it's the fall holiday season, and 2) the fact that all of the Republican Presidential Candidates were there, which is no small feat.

Still, CNN/YouTube handled this debate differently than the Democratic Debate. First, the level of promotion of the event was dramatically scaled back compared to the first. Second, there were fewer questions picked out of the 5,200 that were submitted : 34 questions versus 43 for the first debate. Third, there was an annoying tendency to pick Blacks who submitted questions about Black issues, when there were videos from people who were not Black, but did ask questions about Blacks and the Republican Party.

(As a momentary aside, I think that practice shows an America that does not exist. It shows an America where only Blacks care about Black or minority issues, and not the real America, where a diverse set of people care about all Americans, and will ask questions regarding how Blacks are treated. To not show this -- the real America -- is criminal and paints America as far more racist than it really is. This country has come a long way and is better than it's ever been.)

CNN/YouTube also didn't handle its video talent properly. In the video I present myself as an example. In the begining I was -- and still am -- part of the sample video for the CNN/YouTube Debates. I'm also on the YTDebates channel, at least as of this writing and you can see my photo on the channel here in this blog post. So when I learned that YouTubers were being flown out by Google to the debates, I thought -- rightfully -- that somone would call.

Nope. Didn't happen.

I also sent an inquiry to determine if this was the case, and didn't get an answer from Steve Grove.

So it makes one wonder -- in this case, me -- what's going on over at CNN / YouTube and why they treat people in this way - or at least me. But given the thousands of people who have made and submitted videos, and the other talent that was promoted, I can't believe it's just me that had the problem.

CNN itself showed little regard for my time when they contact me for the first debate. Three show producers contacted me separately and in one case I thought I was to get on a flight. Then didn't get a call back. Then was essentially made to wait for a few days, then got a call saying I wasn't being flown out, only to get a call from another show flying me to New York.

Nuts.

What bothered me this time around was not that I was not called, but Steve didn't answer my emails attempting to learn what he and YouTube were going to do. If they'd said "Zennie, we don't need you this time", or "Hey CNN thinks you're an Obama supporter, and they've got a problem with that" then I'd be fine. I just wanted communication. I didn't get it.

As for the debate itself there were a lot of problems in addtion to the ones I discussed above. Not a single video question on Health Care was presented, leaving one to think the Republican Party doens't care about it. Is that CNN's call or the Republican Party? One has to assume they were working together. But in eliminating that series of questions, CNN / YouTube and the Republican Party pissed off a country.

Plus, CNN / YouTube did't tell video submitters they were going to do this, and the video makers -- given the Democratic Debate with YouTube, had full reason to think they would do so. Moreover, CNN / YouTube didn't tell anyone what they were going to do -- I learned it from CNN's David Bohrman being quoted in the New York Times.

That's not good.

In closing, I think CNN / YouTube owes YouTubers an appology and I'm also disappointed with how Steve Grove handled things this time around. I have high standards for him and I expect that -- givent the historic nature of what he's doing with YouTube and CNN that he will reach and maintain them. It's not personal -- I like Steve -- just professional.

I don't know Dave Bohrman, but I expect that he's a fine and upstanding person who will take these crticisms to heart and act on them. I think all of us want to see the CNN / YouTube system reach its potential.

Dave Colarusso On "How Social Media Can Help Shape Society"

Dave Colarusso who created the Community Counts / CNN / YouTube Debates website and is a co-creator of 10Questions, was interviewed by Jean Yung of the USC Annenberg School of Business. The article's called "How Social Media Can Help Shape Society" and is here below and linked to in the title of this post.

How social media can help shape society
OJR speaks with a co-creator of 10Questions.com about how the site is helping empower popular discussion about the U.S. Presidential campaign.
By Jean Yung
Posted: 2007-11-12

Building on July's YouTube/CNN presidential debate, 10Questions.com has opened a new channel of communication between the public and the presidential hopefuls.

Welcome to the agora of the 21st century: 10 Questions is a people-powered platform for presidential politics created by Andrew Rasiej and Micah L. Sifry of techPresident and high school physics teacher David Colarusso, who also runs a site called Community Counts. Anyone can upload a video question for the candidates. The public votes on the questions it wants to see answered, and the candidates respond to the top 10 questions.

Will such a forum bring the democracy of the Internet to politics? OJR spoke on the phone with 10 Questions co-creator and self-described "technical guy" for the site, David Colarusso. An edited transcript follows.

OJR: 10 Questions is based on the technology of your site, Community Counts. How did Community Counts get its start?

Colarusso: Back in the beginning of this year, YouTube began spotlighting individual candidates on its page by posting a video of the candidate asking the community a question. YouTube users were then invited to submit video responses. Lastly, the candidate responded to these responses. For example, the first question was by Mitt Romney: "What do you believe is America's single greatest challenge?". I submitted a response, and luckily, the first two candidates replied to my videos.

It became obvious to us users after a while that there wasn't a good mechanism for the candidates to understand what the community valued. We thought the community should have some say as to what they wanted to see the candidate respond to. So we said, why don't we just survey everyone? That turned into Community Counts.

When the YouTube/CNN debate came along, I had the tools necessary for people to vote on those questions. We got a good deal of press coverage. We had a lot of users: 30,000 votes by 6,000 voters. That got the attention of the people of techPresident.

After the debate was over, we thought about what we wanted to see happen, and that turned into 10 Questions.

OJR: How is 10 Questions different from the YouTube/CNN debates?

Colarusso: There are some rather profound differences. The primary one is that we're doing this as a people-powered forum, not a debate. It's a discussion with the candidates. The YouTube debate allowed people to ask questions, but CNN had the ultimate say in choosing the final videos. YouTube also took away the features that let users see their peers' most popular videos. Community Counts allowed the users to vote on the questions themselves, to prioritize them. We pose the question: Do you think this should be asked of the candidates? Community Counts shows that when you ask that you get serious stuff.

Another difference is that we offer the ability for the community to comment on the candidates' replies and to rate whether the question was answered.

OJR: As of this morning, 10 Questions had about 76,000 votes and 160 videos. What is the traffic like? How do you add traffic to the site? What do you expect in the final week?

Colarusso: We'll probably get about 100,000 votes by November 14. The videos come in spurts as different groups get interested.

The idea of leveraging the wisdom of the crowds – that a group of people together can make better decisions – works when the crowd is diverse. The two ways we try to get diversity is to make the audience very large and to reach out to different populations. We have a collection of 40 cross-partisan "sponsors," such as the Huffington Post, Hugh Hewitt, DailyKos, BET. There is no financial relationship. The sponsors let their readers and viewers know what's going on over here. We have a nice mix of left and right voters.

OJR: How can you tell the political leaning of your visitors?

Colarusso: We can only say where they're coming from – our main referring sites (our sponsors) have a nice mix.

As for traffic, there are different drivers. Up to today, we've seen three major spikes. (We can tell by looking at the history for each of the videos – the top two videos would show these spikes.)

The first spike was our initial launch. In terms of unique individual visitors to the site, we had about 5,000. There was a peak of 7,000 visitors per day during the launch period.

The second spike in traffic, with a peak of about 11,000 individual visitors to the site, was on October 29, during Barack Obama's MySpace/MTV dialogue. We had worked it out so that the top ten questions on our site at the time would be asked. MoveOn.org sent an e-mail to their users telling them to vote on videos. It generated a lot of attention and traffic. The result was that a question on net neutrality shot up to number one, and it's still currently the top video. The following week there were discussions on the legitimacy of MoveOn.org. They were accused of "astroturfing". We don't think it's the right characterization. Sending out an e-mail asking people to vote doesn't guarantee that everyone will vote.

We do have safeguards on our site – only one vote per IP address allowed. At the end of round one [on November 14, when the top ten questions will be submitted to the candidates], we'll start an auditing process to further refine those safeguards.

This last weekend, there was another spike of about 6,400 unique visitors, resulting in the question, "Is America unofficially a theocracy?" climbing into the current number two spot. A blogger had posted an entry asking his readers to vote on two questions on religion and politics. It took off like crazy after someone dugg the blog entry. It got a couple thousand diggs, and generated a lot of traffic. So in the course of the weekend, it pushed these questions right up to the top 10. Certainly this is not astroturfing. This is not an organized e-mail list. People came and stayed around to vote on other questions.

We're big on being transparent. We've been blogging each day about the traffic. As of today, we've had about 65,000 unique visitors total since the site started. We're pretty happy that these individual people came to vote, and then stayed around to vote on other videos. On average people voted on about three videos. That's promising.

In the last peak, there were fewer unique voters but more voting. It's interesting to see how these numbers are correlated. This is the mystery of the Web – how people participate.

OJR: Have you any idea which campaign is more Web-organized than others, in terms of submitting videos to the site or getting their supporters to vote?

Colarusso: It's a tricky question. You see, you might have a small group that's good at mobilizing its members – but it has few members. I can tell you that over the life of the site, we've got in the top ten list of referring sites (in rough order): digg, blogspot [both from last week's spike], Crooks&Liars, MSNBC, Hugh Hewitt at Townhall, TalkingPointsMemo, HotAir, and Conservative Grapevine.

OJR: One of the hot topics surrounding the democracy of Internet-based forums is: Are the questions better? Smarter? More original? More relevant? What are your thoughts?

Colarusso: I think they're definitely diverse, and that's one of the main things we're trying to get at – a sense of what our community, our visitors think are questions that should be asked. So it's hard not to succeed with that rubric [laughs].

It's interesting to note that these questions are different from the normal questions. I think that means they're adding something. Policy-specific questions, such as net neutrality, or questions about whether America is unofficially a theocracy are obviously what this community feels strongly about.

OJR: What can journalists learn from this public forum?

Colarusso: An interesting question, but hard to answer at the moment. This is something that has to run its course. There could be another spike tomorrow and everything could change. This will work best when we have the most number of users participating. That's when we'll have the most diverse sample. The lesson might just be that there is a desire on people's part to have this access to candidates. We see a lot of student voices, students asking questions. We see the participation of people who might not normally feel like they have access. It's entirely egalitarian. We're not promoting any one viewpoint. We're just letting people decide. I think people very much appreciate that feeling that what you get is the will of the community.

OJR: Will the informal style of Internet home videos put an end to the sound-bite-driven style of politics on TV?

Colarusso: One of our goals is to provide a forum to allow politicians to move away from sound bites. It has to do with what we're looking for. With all these debates on TV, candidates say they don't get the chance to give nuanced answers. We're giving them a month to submit answers. They'll actually have to live up to that.

Additionally, having the community rate their answers lets the candidate know that they have an engaged community. And we hope that that will also provide an impetus for a more substantive answer.

As far as the informality of the questions, I think the main benefit is to put a human face on people who ask the questions, to make people feel more engaged when they are watching someone that looks more like them.

OJR: Is anyone analyzing or tabulating all the questions you've gotten?

Colarusso: We're keeping tabs on it – trying to give commentary as we go. We're providing data on votes and history. I'm definitely interested in seeing what the final tally looks like. There's a lot to glean there.

Has YouTube Crashed 4 Days Before The CNN / YouTube Republican Debate?

Wow. It's Sunday, November 25th at 10 AM.

For some reason, when I go to http://www.youtube.com I get this message:

"Http/1.1 Service Unavailable"

That's wild. It also means I can't review my video traffic or upload videos for the CNN / YouTube Debate. I tried to get to YouTube via my FireFox Browser, but again, I got:

"Http/1.1 Service Unavailable"

So what's going on, I don't know. I just know that in all the time I've used YouTube.com, I've never seen this. And it's certainly impacting the business of thousands of people, including CNN.

Yikes!

CNN / YouTube Debate Question - "Brownie" And The Presidential Cabinet

This is one o the more popular questions at Community Counts, to my surprise!

ABC Iowa Debates - ABC Commits Video Fraud

Calling for a "Vloggercot"

I just finished watching the ABC Iowa Republican Presidential Debate. You know the one. The one that claimed to be based around video submissions by people like you and me. The one that got everyone thinking that the top rated videos would be used? The one where it was reported that ABC News George Stephanopoulos would use the questions.

Well, they didn't do that.

ABC committed the most brazen act of video content fraud I've ever seen. They promoted this debate as driven by video questions submitted, then had people upload videos, set up a system to rank videos, then showed those videos in some order that in itself was questionable.

I submitted a video, but it was a recycled one from the YouTube debate that wasn't asked. But other video-bloggers like Newbievids made new videos for the ABC effort, then had to sit and watch as their great work was ignored.

ABC only picked two videos -- none were top-ranked. The first one was the typical, predictable, stereotypical blonde white female that a TV producer would select. Not even in the running at all, yet picked out of a hat.

ABC owes American an appology for this outrage in getting the vlogging community all worked up over nothing. ABC even sent an email stating this:

Thanks for submitting your video question for the candidates!

As you know, the deadline for submitting videos for the Republican
candidates is now closed.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos & his editorial staff are still reviewing
your insightful & articulate questions for Sunday's program.

Tune in to see if your question is picked! Check your local listings for
the scheduled airtime for the Special edition of "This Week with George
Stephanopoulos" this Sunday, August 5th.

Don't worry- you're role in ABC News' political coverage is *NOT* over:

We want to know your opinion of the forum. Did the candidates tackle the
issues? Specifically your issue? Are you satisfied with their answers to
the questions asked?

What is your reaction to the Republican debates?

Send in your video following Sunday's discussion and your new
contribution will have the opportunity to air in post-debate review &
analysis.

HOW TO SUBMIT VIDEOS:

1) Via cell phone
Record a 15-45 second clip and email it to: icaught@abcnews.go.com

2) Via the web:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/BeSeenBeHeard/story?id=3446667

We hope you'll accept this new challenge!
~The ABC News 'Talk Back' Team

Oh. But that pales in comparison to this email from ABC:

"'TALK BACK' Team @ ABCNews"

More options Aug 3 (2 days ago)
Greetings from ABC News!

Thank you so much for taking the time to send ABC News your video
questions for the Republican Candidates!

Your videos have made the first-cut and are featured in our online
voting section of the 'iCaught- VOTE 2008" section of the website.

http://ugv.abcnews.go.com

We encourage you, your family, colleagues & friends to vote/rate
favorite questions & the highest rated videos will be a factor in George
Stephanopoulos' decision and also have the opportunity to be featured in
ABC News NOW's post-debate Spin room!

The deadline for voting is Saturday, August 4th @ midnight EDT.

Thanks again for your efforts & Good luck!

~The ABC News 'TalkBack' Team

ABC's next covering the Dems. Maybe we should send ABC a message and not submit any videos at all.

Hmm...

The CNN Roland Martin Debates Show in NYC - Zennie's Transcript

CNN's just posted the transcript from the CNN Roland Martin Debates Show which was shown on Friday, July 27, 2007. Here's the text below. But some information, first my name is spelled Zennie, not Zenni. That's about it; here it is:

MARTIN: Joining me now, the four people you just saw asking those YouTube questions. Kim Friedrich, a working mom who's battling breast cancer; Lucas Brown Eyes, and award winning film student; Zenni Abraham, CEO of Sports Business Simulations, and Lori Harfenist, a TV producer from New York.

Now Kim, I got to start with you. You got lots of attention worldwide as a result of your question.

FRIEDRICH: Yes, I did.

MARTIN: And a lot of people were shocked when you took your wig off. What led you to say: I need to do this, to get this point across?

FRIEDRICH: Actually it was anger at Senator Edwards and his wife. The day that Mrs. Edwards, that they had that press conference that she had cancer again, I heard one thing out of it. In 48 hours, she went from thinking she had an unrelated problem to cancer, to finding out that she might have cancer to having tests, to having biopsy, to having treatment all in 48 hours. I was home having -- recovering from my biopsy at the time and what took me four months, that's what they did in 48 hours, because I didn't have health insurance.

MARTIN: You know what? We got a lot of questions in this debate dealing with healthcare, and that's really personal to me, because like a lot of folks, in 2000, covered the Democratic National Convention, my appendix ruptured, in the hospital five days, $70,000 and frankly, I ended up having to file for bankruptcy because the healthcare bills were absolutely phenomenal.

Kim, you talked about the anger. Lucas, talk about that, because a lot of folks were angry.

BROWN EYES: Yeah.

MARTIN: In the questions, they were really upset.

BROWN EYES: Well, that's because the people who feel like they're not heard are angry. If you don't feel like you're being heard, you're going to be angry. And YouTube allowed them to speak. So naturally, you're going to get a lot of anger. Like my generation, I'm going to college and a lot of my friends are angry because they can't afford to go to college, so they're going to a college that isn't their first choice, they're going to a community when they can't afford it and they're angry about it, which prompted me to make my video.

ABRAHAM: His anger came out as humor.

(INAUDIBLE)

MARTIN: Now, that was good, that was good. Now Laura, talk about that. This whole issue of this YouTube debate. Has it really advanced the political process? Do you think it really changed anything?

HARFENIST: I think it did because I think it got people really thinking that they can actually make a difference for a change. I know, for myself, before I even voted I felt completely apathetic because politics seems over here, everyone seems the same. This forum really allowed people to, you know, come into more -- all the candidates in a more natural vernacular, they lost the finger pointing a lot, which I really appreciated. Unfortunately it's back, right now.

But, I was happy to see that it made it feel approachable. I think young people are going to start voting a lot more because they feel like, wow, you know what? I can actually make a difference.

MARTIN: And we saw a large spike in terms of the 18-49 demo, really watching, now.

Zenni, let's talk about this debate, took place four days ago.

ABRAHAM: That's right.

MARTIN: People are still talking about it.

ABRAHAM: That's right.

MARTIN: I mean, it's amazing.

ABRAHAM: But you know what's interesting about the debate, it's not just that people are still talking about it, but it's the first that we have had a television debate and an Internet presentation of the debate inform the national conversation. For example, you know about the Senator Obama, Senator Clinton spat.

MARTIN: Yeah, and it's still going on.

ABRAHAM: But something else, though, there have been five different videos that have presented different views that Senator Clinton has given on the same subject and accused her of flip-flopping and so now it's starting to change in a way, such that by next week we're going to have a different conversation and that's because of YouTube and it's fascinating what's happening.

MARTIN: So many folks are logging on and people are really talking about it and that's what's important to me, the fact that we're getting people involved in this campaign, because I'm sick of the media, frankly, folks, my colleagues keep saying, oh, this is so long, you think, like that. This is for the presidency, the commander in chief.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

MARTIN: I mean, give me a break. We spend more time picking a car than we do for the president.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

HARFENIST: I thing that's the country's really sick of the way that everything is. Everyone wants to feel proud of being an American again, and our foreign policy and you know, rally behind the presidency and this is our opportunity to do it, so we should definitely start now.

FRIEDRICH: Yeah well, people are tired of the president just being an automaton, too. Just saying the same things over and over again and it just seems like they don't even mean it anymore. I want to see the real people. I want to see what they really think and what they really believe.

ABRAHAM: You know what's interesting, and this has to be brought out, is that next debate, the Republican debate, you're only going to see two of them. So, I think the Republicans are afraid -- they didn't come to the NAACP convention...

FRIEDRICH: I hope not.

Yeah. I mean, but Kim, how do you feel about that? I mean, you have 10 Republican candidates, only two have said, yeah, I'll be happy to show up. In fact, Mitt Romney even criticized the debate saying, well, he didn't want to get asked a question about a snowman. I mean, as if your question was simply about -- a snowman. As if the other questions were considered to be meaningless. How does that make you feel?

FRIEDRICH: Well, actually, I think it's funny. I think it's funny that a rival network that's a minion of the Republican party, if you can beg that phrase, they accuse the Democrats of being scared because they wouldn't be on their channel. And it seems like the Republicans are running scared of people -- actual, real people. And that's what we are.

ABRAHAM: Especially African-Americans.

MARTIN: Lori.

HARFENIST: Absolutely, it speaks for itself. You know? If you don't want answer questions that real people are putting out there -- you know -- it speaks volumes for...

MARTIN: Would that affect your decision to vote for a Republican candidate if they chose not to show up for the September 17 CNN/YouTube debate?

BROWN EYES: Extremely because YouTube, this whole debate got me into politics. I registered to vote because of this.

MARTIN: I mean, this is your first election? Your first time you vote?

BROWN EYES: This is my first time to vote. I just turned 18. Now, this has got so many of my friends to actually start watching the debates. You know? Everyone's talking about it and if the Republicans don't show up, that's going to be a big, like, what?

ABRAHAM: And you won't vote for them.

BROWN EYES: I won't. I'll be like, what are you so afraid of? Why are you afraid of hearing what we have to say?

MARTIN: I'll tell you what. I certainly appreciate the fact that all of you stepped out there, put your questions out there, and hopefully more people will get engaged, because again, this is the commander in chief and there, frankly, is no more important decision that we can make, than we choose a president of the United States.

I thank all of you. Kim Friedrich, Lori Harfenist, Lucas Brown Eyes, and Zenni Abraham. Thanks a lot.

ABRAHAM: I have the brown eyes.

MARTIN: I appreciate that. Folks, you can catch the CNN/YouTube debate again this weekend Saturday and Sunday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern.

Zennie Abraham's Trip To The CNN Roland Martin Debates Show in NYC

This is a video of my great adventure of a trip to New York City and to be a guest on CNN's "Roland Martin Debates" Show on Friday July 27th 2007. My question submitted for the CNN / YouTube debates opened up a whole new set of doors and emboldened me to use video more effectively to communicate ideas and messages as well as to give others a voice. But that's not what this video's about.

This movie's about my trip.

The video takes the first two days of my trip, from plane ride to after the show itself. It also features the wonderful people I met along the way, from the awesome Zana at the Jumeria Essex Hotel on Central Park South, to Shira and Alexis with CNN and the great CNN Contributors, especially Julie Roginsky, Bill Donohue, and the terrific Irshad Manji.

It also features the CNN / YouTube debate stars, Kim Fredrick, Lucas "Brown Eyes", and Lori Harfenist aka "The Resident." This video's for anyone who wonders how a person comes to be on a TV program and how they're taken care of by a network. It was a great experience. I have a lot of people to thank which I do in the video. Take a look and share it with others.

Hillary's Flip Flop - Senator Clinton Backs Off On Promise Of New Leadership

At Monday's CNN / YouTube Debate, Senator Hillary Clinton stopped short of saying she would talk to Third World leaders like Hugo Chavez, explaining in a complex way that she would send diplomatic envoys to do this. By contrast, Senator Obama expained that he would send a message that he was willing to have dialog with leaders we don't currently have a great relationship with.

After the debate, some have tried to paint Senator Obama as less experienced than Senator Clinton because of the debate. While that's inaccurate, another story has emerged that paints Senator Clinton in the position of flip-flopping. In the article below, she says President Bush should talk to leaders like Hugo Chavez! Morover, she said this on April 22nd of this year.

Read!

Clinton Blasts President Bush's Foreign Policy
http://wcbstv.com/us/local_story_112220939.html

(CBS/AP) DECORAH, Iowa Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday criticized President Bush's foreign policy, and said if she were president she would do things differently, including beginning diplomatic talks with supposed enemies and sending envoys throughout the world.

"I would begin diplomatic discussions with those countries with whom we have differences, to try to figure out what is the depth of those differences," said Clinton, who spoke to about 1,000 people at Luther College in Decorah in northeastern Iowa.

"I think it is a terrible mistake for our president to say he will not talk with bad people. You don't make peace with your friends -- you have to do the hard work of dealing with people you don't agree with," said Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

Opening talks with other countries doesn't mean the U.S. won't defend its interests whenever necessary, she said, "but what it means is that we should discuss other routes before we decide we're going to pursue military options.

"We cannot provide the leadership we need unless we are willing to try engage the other countries," she said,

She dished out plenty of criticism about the war in Iraq, and said when it comes to Iran, the U.S. needs to engage those with the real power -- the clerics.

Of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad she said: "He's like their front man, he's like their puppet. He goes out and gets people agitated and says things that everybody responds to, but he's not making the decisions. The decisions are being made within the alternative government of these clerics.

"We have no idea of how these people think, we have no contact with them," Clinton said, arguing that she's advocated for years to have a process of diplomacy with Iran.

"If we ever have to use force against any country, it should be seen as an action of last resort, not first resort," she said.

Zennie's Video Take On The CNN / YouTube Debate - Score The Debate For Barack Obama

New York Times' Kit Seelye Can't Get Her Black Guys Straight - I'm Referenced and Linked Twice In The Same Article!

Katharine Seelye a reporter for The New York Times wrote an article about tommorrow's CNN / YouTube Debates where she links to two of my videos twice in paragraphs close to each other, but fails to identify me as the same person!

This is both sad and funny. But it's mostly sad and not that funny. Here's the part of the article I'm writing about:

" Another asks the candidates if they would put their friends in important government jobs. “Or are you going to hire the best and the brightest?” he asks. “Or are you prepared to tell us that your friends are the best and the brightest?”

A black man standing in front of a check-cashing store asks the candidates how they would stop predatory lending in low-income neighborhoods. A college student wants to know if the candidates would lower the legal drinking age to 18 from 21.

Now if you click on each link, you'll discover that both lead to videos of me asking questions. In other words, she sourced the same person for two different points of information, but to the lazy eye and finger that would not bother to click on the links -- yeah, right, -- it looks like she's writing about two different people.

Nope. She's not.

Katharine, what's the deal? I've just got to ask why you would reference me twice in this way, one paragraph after the other? And why "A black man standing in front" of a check cashing center, when I wasn't even STANDING IN FRONT OF A CHECK CASHING CENTER. THAT'S A BANK OF AMERICA ATM!"

It just goes to show you how stupid racism is, in this case, institutional racism, where the person thinks they're doing no harm at all in reaching for a stereotype, even if the stereotype tells the story incorrectly.



Wow, this is terrible!

Now, you might be saying "Hey at least she noticed your videos." But that's not the point. It's the principal of the way "Kit" Seelye (as she's called) did it. The best way -- the most direct way -- would have been to write something like "And Zennie Abraham, a YouTube vlogger, has two provacative questions, ..."

Think about it. Read the story. She wrote the article as if I were two different people, rather than the same person. I can't help but wonder what was rolling around in her head.

Geez.

CNN/YouTube Debates Current Statistical Breakdown As Of 10 AM Sunday July 22

As you know, the CNN / YouTube debates is set to air tommorrow night and give the American public a window into, well, what America's thinking about. I'm a video presenter, having submitted seven clips, including the one that is part of the example video at youtube.com/debates

I thought it would be fun and informative to cull through as many of the submissions as possible and find patterns.

Here's what I've learned.

First, CNN and YouTube have strict guidelines. They are as follows from the debates website:

Be original -- choose your own approach.
Be personal -- your perspective is important.
Choose your focus -- you can address one or all of the candidates.
Keep it quick -- your question should be less than 30 seconds (and, in the language of your choice).
Make it look good -- speak loudly and keep that camera steady.
Provide context -- in your question or video description, include your name & home town.
Please note -- all videos are subject to the YouTube Terms of Use.

The guidelines are rather subjective, save for one: "your question should be less than 30 seconds"

They're pretty serious about that one and to the degree one can pair down a video to get under this, it stands a better chance to be picked for the debate itself. I wondered just how many videos were over 30 seconds in length, so I counted them one by one. I came up with 631 submissions that were over the limit, and some were way over, like 3 to 5 minutes -- ok, just two of them. But that comes to 26.7 percent of the total and dropped the number of eligible videos to 1,649 as of this writing.

I next wondered how many of the submissions were by women, or had women in them as part of a group or couple. The number was about where I thought it would be. There were 551 videos that featured women or had women in them. That comes to 23.7 percent of the total, and that does include the videos that are over the time limit. That means about 1 of every four submissions was female. Ideally, since women are about 50 percent of the population, you'd like to see a video submission spread that reflects the culture. We're 25 percent off here.

Now the other question is how many people of color are represented in the CNN / YouTube Debates? Well if you really stop and think about it, that's a hard question to give a perfect answer to without surveying the people themselves. CNN / YouTube did not do this, so I had to use an "eye count" and that's a hard one because taking away someone like myself who's obviously black, how can you tell if someone's a mix of, say, Latino and Black, or any combination?

Well, you can't.

But it's important to try and gain some handle on this question of racial / ethnic representation, so you know what I did? I counted all of the obviously black and African American faces like mine. I came up with 157 people, or 6.6 percent, or to put it another way, almost 7 percent of the total number of submissions. I was also careful not to include people -- like myself -- who made more than one entry. There's one guy called "antmoe" that must have installed 15 videos -- I think he holds the record number so far.

So the 157 count is a good one -- no double counting.

According to the 2002 U.S. Census update, 13 percent of the U.S population was black -- and that includes children. This is 2007, of course, but we've got to go with the best data, and that's the best the country can do right now. But that comes to just over 1 of every ten people. We're at 7 percent -- almost -- here. But I'm going to give a different take on this, because again, according to the U.S. Census, 79. percent of the population lives in urban areas.

My point is that the real number that is of importance is the one that shows the racial composition of the 80 percent of the population that's in urban areas. It's really hard to get a good number which reports this for the whole country and not city - by - city -- WEIRD -- but I can tell you that the ranks of blacks and other minorities is greater and the city is also the place most likely to contain people who will make and upload videos.

What I'm getting at is there's not enough black and African Americans in the video submissions to really represent the population in my view. But it's getting better and I think it will improve and in a short time. What I do take from this spread of videos is that on the whole the population of them is closer to than the American makeup than I thought they would be. I'm really happy about that. Moreover, as racial and ethnic integration improves -- in other words, more people realize that racism is a mental illness and will not be racist -- the improving condition will be further reflected in the video program.

But that written, if we consider that about 50 percent of the U.S Black Population consists of kids, then the number of adult blacks roughly matches the percentage of participants in the debate - just over 6 percent. That's good, I think.



See, acts like the making and submission of videos for this contest are a cultural development. But if, say, only one part of the culture's doing it, that fact points to segregation of behavior and ideas. That's bad. The CNN / YouTube debates reveal that even though we still have a long way to go, we get better with each passing generation. But I think one short-term solution is in the "team videos" that are present in the contest.

"Team Videos" are where the username -- say DailyYonder is actually a collection of video questions by different people under one YouTube name. These group efforts present different people asking questions and the range is racially, sexually, and age diverse. It's really the one practice that has contributed to what diversity exists in the debate effort.

But what it says more importantly is the desire of a group of Americans to help level the field for everyone else. That's the beauty of this country.

CNN/YouTube Debates - Godzilla and Terrorism

The title of this question is dramatic, but give a listen and look and you'll understand. Also visit http://www.communitycounts.us and vote for this question when it appears.

Thanks!

Ron Paul - My YouTube Question For The Hon. Ron Paul (R) Texas - Zennie Abraham

Debate Question: "Brownie" and Your Presidential Cabinet

http://zennie2005.blogspot.com - This is a question for the CNN / YouTube Debates and it's regarding the presidential candidates. Remember Michael Brown? "Brownie?" The man President Bush picked to head FEMA and became the poster child for government failure during the Katrina Disaster, and who had no qualifications for the job other than his loyalty to President Bush?

Will you hire your friends to run key government positions, or the best and the brightest? Or are you prepared to tell me that your friends are the best and the brightest?