Does Obama/Iran question spell the end of traditional media?
By John Lister
A press conference exchange between Barack Obama and an Iranian Internet user has prompted some to say traditional questioning from journalists could be on the way out. But the democratic possibilities of the Internet for public questioning have some serious limitations.
The debate was prompted by a press conference yesterday in which the Huffington Post relayed a question to Obama from an Iranian visitor to its site. Obama’s response was immediately uploaded to Facebook (with subtitles) and linked to in White House Twitter post.
There’s been some dispute over how spontaneous the exchange was. It’s clear that Obama was aware there would be a question from an Iranian, and there was a change in the usual running order which traditionally sees sites like the Huffington Post asking questions after the major news agencies, broadcasters and newspapers. However, there’s no evidence Obama had advance knowledge of the question itself.
Today the Guardian newspaper’s Michael Tomasky writes how unlikely it once would have been to imagine an ordinary man in Iran could have a question answered by the U.S. president. He goes on to claim, “One of these years, the ‘press conference’ may give way to the “news conference” (that is, no press involved), in which a president takes questions via social media from the people. All the people everywhere. It’s a new world. Again.”
The problem is that literally opening the floor up to unfiltered questions would be troublesome. It would be logistically impossible for a public figure to answer every question submitted, so there’d have to be some selection process.
Taking them either at random or in the order of submission would run a serious risk of allowing prank questions to make the event into a farce: when British politician David Cameron tried a similar event with a local newspaper, virtually every question was either facetious or an attempt at comedy.
But selecting questions would be an equally tough task. Somebody would have to decide which questions were relevant and valid, without imposing personal or political bias.
The biggest argument against public online questioning is that the questioner will usually not have the opportunity to follow up a question. A politician may try to deflect a question in their initial response, or may unintentionally reveal a point which deserves further exploration. And psychologically, it’s a lot more difficult to lie to a questioner’s face than through a camera or a 140-character message.
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June 24th, 2009
This would never happen entirely. For starters, while social media is very popular, so is the press. Maybe not printed news these days, but TV channels and internet sites of respected tabloids are becoming increasingly popular, and people look to here for news. There are more people not in great contact with the internet than there are who are in great contact with it – not enough people access the internet for their news yet or indeed for many years I suspect to make the press ‘extinct’ from these question times.
Then there’s the issue of how to filter questions which is nigh-on impossible, as mentioned in the article. Its a logistical nightmare and while a few of these may happen and be used to target a different audience of people in politics and discussions, it will not become the preferred method of Q&A time for a long, long, long while yet.