Why YouTube is Better than Reporters

Last night's Democratic debate, sponsored by YouTube, may have been a revolutionary moment. Previous debates have taken questions by lay citizens and had them read by the priesthood of the press to the candidates. And there have been debates where citizens could, briefly, take to the microphones to ask a few questions. But there's never been one like this, composed entirely of citizen questions delivered by citizens themselves in the manner of their choosing on their computers.

The effect was dramatic in two ways. First, the questions were better than the ones that reporters usually pose. In my profession, a reporter makes their name by trying to come up with the cleverest possible question to show how smart we are and to elicit an answer that will live in memory. Everyone wants to emulate Bernard Shaw's 1988 question of Michael Dukakis where he asked if he would change his stance on the death penalty if his wife, Kitty, were raped and murdered. Dukakis's clinical answer reiterating his oppositon to the death penalty, cost him dearly in the election. Last night's questions were without such melodrama.

But the biggest effect, I thought, was on the candidate themselves. A candidate has no problem fudging and avoiding a reporter's question. It's harder to blow off the plaintive query of an average citizen. If I ask a candidate about gay marriage, it's not the same thing as a lesbian couple, asking as they did last night, why can't we get married? The questions, posed from a giant screen above the audience, had more force and moral weight than if they were posed by the likes of me. Another triumph for Google.