CNN/YouTube Debate Features Hillary Plant ( and other demo backers- words from the organizer)

David Bohrman, the network's Washington bureau chief and the mastermind behind the format

Now we have a name in the CNN Management structure....

“David Bohrman, the network’s Washington bureau chief and the mastermind behind the format”

Now we need to do some research — I wonder if this guy has some relationship to the Clintons. I wouldn’t be surprised.

What CNN promised:

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Okay, stupid post title. The title should be, "why this debate agriculture matters". For the answer we turn to Hot Air commenter Buy Danish:

Speaking of suits, I posted this on one of the other threads, but look at what the CNN Suit in Chief, David Bohrman, who is their “Washington bureau chief and executive producer of the debate”, promised:
From: Sneak Peek at CNN/YouTube Debate Videos/By Ariel Alexovich, dated November 21, 2007.
…many of the remaining posts involve asking the candidates to defend their opposition to gay marriage and abortion. Those kinds of “lobbying grenades” would be disqualified by the CNN selection team, Mr. Bohrman said.
“There are quite a few things you might describe as Democratic ‘gotchas,’ and we are weeding those out,” Mr. Bohrman said. CNN wants to ensure that next Wednesday’s Republican event is “a debate of their party.”

The suit has a few questions to answer. I don’t recall any “gay marriage” questions, but they sure did a lousy job of weeding!

Heh. He said "weeding". Looks like he missed a few. Oh, and from that article linked above, let's not let Anderson Cooper off just yet:

Some crafty people seem to think that addressing debate host Anderson Cooper in their video will give them the edge to be chosen, but Mr. Bohrman said such pandering to CNN is grounds for disqualification. Mr. Cooper and two of his researchers are involved in the selection process, Mr. Bohrman noted.

I wonder if he noticed that one young lass was such a so totally huge Anderson Cooper fan (as well as an Edwards fan)?

Post to del.icio.us

Posted by SeeDubya on November 29, 2007 2:37 PM

See #4!

From the NY Times:

November 21, 2007, 3:35 pm
Sneak Peek at CNN/YouTube Debate Videos(Repub)

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By Ariel Alexovich

With only a week to go before the Republican CNN/YouTube debate next Wednesday, voters are lighting up the video site with serious and not-so-serious questions for the eight candidates.

David Bohrman, CNN’s Washington bureau chief and executive producer of the debate, spoke to The Caucus from “an undisclosed location” where he and a team of six others were pouring over the entries.

So far, about 3,000 questions have been posted to YouTube, Mr. Bohrman said, and he expects to have about 5,000 videos at his disposal come Sunday, the contest deadline. That beats July’s Democratic YouTube debate, which pulled in about 3,000 videos.

Most questions online have been pulled from public viewing for review, but many of the remaining posts involve asking the candidates to defend their opposition to gay marriage and abortion. Those kinds of “lobbying grenades” would be disqualified by the CNN selection team, Mr. Bohrman said.

“There are quite a few things you might describe as Democratic ‘gotchas,’ and we are weeding those out,” Mr. Bohrman said. CNN wants to ensure that next Wednesday’s Republican event is “a debate of their party.”

Generally speaking, the executive producer said that fewer people have submitted singing entries compared with the Democratic entries, but the creativity level is similar. The video pool also is perhaps a little less diverse with regard to sex and race, but there’s a noticeable increase in group videos instead of clips where one individual poses a question.

Queries tackle a broad range of issues. We found inquiries about military service, rainforest preservation, school violence, avian flu, oil and the U.S.-Russian relationship. Tom Williams of Meridian, Miss., wants to know how the candidates feel about the Stephen Colbert campaign. However, Mr. Bohrman said the best questions he’s seen tackle the substantive – the Republicans’ differing views on torture and immigration.

Some crafty people seem to think that addressing debate host Anderson Cooper in their video will give them the edge to be chosen, but Mr. Bohrman said such pandering to CNN is grounds for disqualification. Mr. Cooper and two of his researchers are involved in the selection process, Mr. Bohrman noted.

One of the most viewed clips is from 19-year-old Sarah Jean Horwitz of New Jersey. Some 2,600 people have watched her perform an unusual interpretive dance (or cheerleading routine, we can’t tell) as she asks candidates which Democratic or Independent candidate they would choose if they had to support a non-Republican.

One thing not mentioned here that sweetens the pot about this “gotcha” question: Anderson Cooper? Gay. That does *prove* collusion, but it certainly makes him sympathetic, doesn’t it? And I agree, the “we didn’t know” bit is either the world’s most blatant impcompetence (which I consider a plausible alternative, that they really are that dumb), or an outright lie.

WTH, this bold faced LIAR, Bohrman said such pandering to CNN is grounds for disqualification. Mr. Cooper and two of his researchers are involved in the selection process, Mr. Bohrman noted.

Another Blogosphere entry:

November 29th, 2007
Where Were the Health Care Questions?

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At a time when CNN had an opportunity to shine as host of last night’s Republican presidential debate, the network faltered. Today conservatives are left with yet another example of bias at the highest level of the media establishment. It’s another sad example of how liberals deliberately portray conservatives as gun-toting, Bible-thumping, and gay-bashing bigots.

I had high hopes for CNN in its role of selecting questions for last night’s debate. The network had nearly 5,000 to choose from — plenty to get a good representation of a variety of issues. Instead, we heard three questions about guns, a topic of significance to the GOP, but was it really that important to ask three different questions? There was also a question attacking trade, another about the North American Union, a silly question about The Holy Bible and two each on abortion (here and here) and homosexuality (here and here). By the time Anderson Cooper got around to introducing a question about the Confederate flag, I was flabbergasted.

It’s no wonder the Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote on his blog, “Is this the Upper East Side view of the GOP?”

Before the debate, I asked Mitt Romney spokesman Kevin Madden about health care — a topic I figured would play a particularly important role last night. Instead, it didn’t come up at all. John McCain briefly mentioned the SCHIP debate, but it came up in the context of another question.

Is there a more serious public policy debate taking place in Washington right now? YouTube users submitted questions about health care — I know because I looked. Why CNN chose to ignore the subject is a question that should be asked today.

With conservatives already skeptical of CNN, last night’s debate reinforces why so many people on the right think the media are biased. It’s actually probably more accurate to say they’re out of touch with reality — painting the GOP and candidates on stage at the debate in the context of God, guns and gays.

UPDATE — 9:01 a.m.: I just scanned the headlines of a few conservative blogs and I’m not alone in my assessment of CNN. Patrick Ruffini and David All, who were both on hand with me last night, were not impressed. And I’d be remiss not to mention the biggest story of the day — CNN’s use of a gay Hillary Clinton supporter’s question. Matthew Balan at NewsBusters and Kevin Aylward of Wizbang have the details.

UPDATE — 6:06 p.m.: It’s one thing for CNN to deliberately exclude questions about health care, as the network did last night, but it’s another thing for one of its own correspondents to then blame the Republican field for not talking about it. Believe it or not, that’s exactly what happened.

Vivian Lee reports on NewsBusters and Conservative Belle that CNN’s Emily Sherman had the gall to say “the Republican presidential contenders seemed to all but ignore what is considered a major priority for many voters.” Give me a break! Did Sherman even watch the debate?

Not only was it ignorant on Sherman’s part to make such a comment, but she looks foolish because, as Lee points out, the candidates did talk about health care.

Sherman must have missed when health care was brought up by former Governor Mitt Romney (Mass.). When question about pork spending, Romney managed to include his experience with health care insurance.
…
Sherman must have also missed when former Governor Mike Huckabee (Ark.) discussed health care coverage expansion for African-Americans. In response to a question asking why African-Americans don’t vote for Republicans, Huckabee managed to mention his health care initiatives in Arkansas.

That makes at least three candidates — McCain, Romney and Huckabee — who discussed health care on their own without any prodding from CNN. It’s time for Sherman to issue a correction and YouTube to dump CNN as a partner.

UPDATE — 10:45 p.m.: I neglected to link to Joe Garofoli’s story in the San Francisco Chronicle earlier. It’s an excellent recap of the debate from the tech crowd.

I’ve also posted statements from CNN and a release from the Save the Debate coalition here.

“CNN would have you believe that out of all the people THEY selected to ask video taped questions of the Republican presidential candidates the this evening at the CNN/YouTube debate they had no idea that Keith Kerr, retired Colonel., U.S. Army; retired Brigadier General, California National Reserve, was a member of a Hillary Clinton LGBT Steering Committee. Nor did they know was on the National Veterans for Kerry Steering Committee in 2004.
“

Kerr is ALSO:

“co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s National Military Veterans group.

Retired Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr was named a co-chair of the group this month, according to a campaign press release. “

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/29/politics/politico/main3552211.shtml

From SF Chronicle:

CAMPAIGN 2008 CNN-YOUTUBE GOP DEBATE
New-media debate sounds like the old
Analysts say CNN picked questions to spark fireworks

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Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, November 29, 2007

The Republican YouTube/CNN presidential debate was a lot different from its Democratic counterpart last summer. And not just because the eight candidates had to field video-posed questions asking "What would Jesus do" about the death penalty, whether they believe every word in the Bible or their position on gun control - after their questioner cocked his weapon.

The questions at Wednesday night's two-hour debate in St. Petersburg, Fla., came not from professional journalists but from people who uploaded short videos to YouTube.com. Yet the debate passed without any questions about health care, and little was said about energy policy or the environment.

However, considerable time was spent talking about guns and abortion, and candidates heard from a gay retired brigadier general from Santa Rosa, who also appeared live at the debate to chastise them for not answering his question about why gays shouldn't serve in the military.

While political analysts praised the first YouTube/CNN debate for its attempts at innovation, this time they questioned the degree to which this melding of old and new media is progressing. If soliciting videos online was supposed to be a way for "ordinary people" to directly question the candidates, then why did Grover Norquist, a leading anti-tax conservative with a Rolodex full of A-list Republicans, get to ask his question? And analysts wondered why the first 35 minutes were devoted to immigration policy, yet little time was allocated to discussion of job creation or the international trade imbalance.

Some analysts pointed to more stage-managing from CNN, whose producers and professional journalists picked the three dozen questions from among 5,000 submitted.

"It seemed more like CNN was picking and choosing the questions for their dramatic effect," said Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, which studies new media and politics and who was in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. "They wanted fireworks, and they got them."

"It looked like (CNN moderator) Anderson Cooper came into this looking to pick a fight," said Rob Bluey, an online media expert for the conservative Heritage Foundation. "CNN saw this as an opportunity to paint the differences between the candidates."

"This is where CNN's process is a bit mystifying to me," said Micah Sifry, co-founder of Personal Democracy Forum and editor of techPresident.com, which explores the use of technology in the White House race. "Why weren't these questions (about health care and the environment) asked?"

So if the mainstream media is controlling the question box, what is the point of using user-generated videos?

Though I have long believed that some CNN employees are skid marks on journalism's shorts I don't believe 1) that they orchestrated anything and 2) that they intended any trickery with the questions. It matters not who asked the questions, CNN employees feeeeeeeeeel.

Some callers to radio talk say, "CNN employees believe that the questions describe Republican issues (guns, Confederate flags, homophobia, evangelicalism equals radical Islam, etc.). CNN therefore is totally oblivious to the hubbub save for the Hillary campaign-related retired military guy."

CNN employees have no comprehension that an equivalent abortion question (IMO) might be to ask the Democrats about partial-birth abortions, "How do you feel about pushing a screwdriver into the head of a newborn?"

Hillary and her plants