Who's The Plant

I think it is kind of serious, on a meta level, the Hillary Clinton may be planting questions at campaign events. I think it's far more serious that CNN is planting bullshit content-free questions in the middle of their debates and making it look like they're the authentic statements of "the people."

Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred "diamonds or pearls" at last night's debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

"Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN," Luisa writes. "I was asked to submit questions including "lighthearted/fun" questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance."

The most annoying part is the fact that there must be "lighthearted/fun" questions in the mix, that it has to be a bucket to be filled. More from Maria:

"CNN ran out of time and used me to "close" the debate with the pearls/diamonds question. Seconds later this girl comes up to me and says, "you gave our school a bad reputation.' Well, I had to explain to her that every question from the audience was pre-planned and censored. That's what the media does. See, the media chose what they wanted, not what the people or audience really wanted. That's politics; that's reality. So, if you want to read about real issues important to America--and the whole world, I suggest you pick up a copy of the Economist or the New York Times or some other independent source. If you want me to explain to you how the media works, I am more than happy to do so. But do not judge me or my integrity based on that question."

Where you certainly don't go for real issues is the Most Trusted Name In News.

But of course, this is no different than the YouTube debate, where questions are submitted and CNN picks the ones they want to use. The point is that any media filter is going to shape the debate in a certain direction. Wolf Blitzer wants to be invited to all the cocktail parties, so he's going to make the debate about him. CNN wants to play gotcha, so they'll turn a question about the Supreme Court into a question about litmus tests for abortion. And CNN has to be lighthearted, so they choose an implicitly sexist question to end the debate.

The real revolution here would be to completely do away with the filter. Tomorrow's issue forum on global warming is through a couple progressive organizations. It'll be webcast. The more of this the better. The traditional media is useless for something like this.