The Definition of Irony in New Media

In the most recent Republican debate, CNN just got a black eye for not disclosing the political relationships some of the questioners had to Democratic candidates. CNN political director Sam Feist said the news channel did not investigate the political leanings of the questioners (although they presented them as "undecided voters" to the viewing public.)

At a glance, it appears as if this is a validation of the mainstream media's reluctance to embrace new media such as YouTube, which is owned by Google. New media channels are unreliable, they say. Bloggers (video or otherwise) have no fact-checkers, and their content should not be trusted.

But it was the bloggers who scooped CNN and exposed the deceitfully biased nature of the questions. And the tool they used to do it... was Google. - Cam Beck

Update: Marty Kaplan at Huffington Post put together a nice list of contradictions by CNN over their methodology and intent.

Comments

[Paul Herring]

The whole YouTube debate idea is a shame. Sure, thousands of videos are submitted but who picks the ones canidates are shown? CNN. If you have thousands of videos, you can pretty much pick the questions you want.

Which brings up another question, if CNN picked the videos, why didn't THEY at least do some due dilligence on the ones THEY used first?

I say CNN and a lot of mainstream media is unreliable.