NBC's Chuck Todd Gathers Citizen Questions for Obama Presser

In another example of traditional journalists experimenting with participatory media, Chuck Todd, NBC's White House Correspondent, is gathering questions from citizens in preparation for Tuesday's prime time press conference with President Barack Obama.

Todd is soliciting question ideas from blog commenters, both through Newsvine.com and a plug on MSNBC's First Read, and he will also look over some of the top questions voted by citizens at Ask The President, (which I just launched in a partnership with The Nation, PDF and The Washington Times). Addressing Newsvine readers, Todd explained:

I'd like question ideas from you for the president next Tuesday night... But I don't necessarily want the question ideas DIRECTLY from you, I want to hear what your neighbors and less politics-obsessed friends and family want asked... I know every reporter claims they are listening to you and I'm not going to promise that I'm going to use a direct question but I do view these prime time press conferences as vehicles for the public...

In response to Ask The President, which enables a more accountable process for transparent voting and question submission by video and text, Todd emailed me asking us to "send ideas" his way. "I'm soliciting question ideas from a wide variety of sources and do want to ask a 'kitchen table' question on Tuesday," he added.

To be crystal clear, neither Todd nor NBC have signed up as formal partners with Ask The President. (Our coalition now spans newspapers, magazines, blogs, non-partisan organizations and large membership groups, but still no television outlets.) And as Todd stressed to his readers, he is not promising to use a citizen question on Tuesday. USA Today also solicited questions for Obama from readers on Monday, though there is no suggestion that the exercise will inform the paper's contact with the White House.

Simply opening up the public discussion of how the media questions the President, however, already helps advance more accountability and transparency in media-government relations. In my new article on The People's Press Conference, I argue that even if the press does not initially rush to use citizen questions, these public discussions can demonstrate "trends, input and ideas to guide journalists on an ongoing basis." And while it is a fine gesture for journalists to casually invite reader questions, as Todd and ABC's Jake Tapper have recently done via blogs and Twitter, we have the platforms to engage much broader, deeper participation:

Some Washington reporters have begun informally soliciting a wider range of questions for their work... David Gregory, host of NBC's Meet the Press, and Jake Tapper, ABC's senior White House correspondent, are experimenting with the micromessage site Twitter to gather input for their interviews with government officials. On March 3 Tapper tapped a bulletin to his Twitter network, in the informal style common on the site, inviting questions for the daily briefings: "didnt get to it today but consider this a standing invite for good q suggestions for gibbs."

These forays are positive, if they reflect a genuine receptivity to deeper citizen input in journalism and government accountability. Yet they offer no reliable metrics for pooling or assessing public priorities. They are not transparent, either, since there is no unified structure displaying how many people drafted questions, or what other citizens think of them, or whether a reporter's selected questions are representative of those submitted. As a largely one-way circuit, such efforts are less likely to foster public debate or spark sustained citizen participation.

I think using open submission and voting platforms -- as President-elect Obama did during the transition, but not since -- is superior:

Few traditional mechanisms, however, capture the public's active interests--empowering people to draft their own ideas, concerns and questions from scratch. Generating and debating new questions is fundamentally different from picking among a scripted menu ... And virtually no traditional media mechanisms couple that original, individual production with transparent, national voting. Doing both can broaden the issues under public discussion while weighting their priority according to public input--a useful service for our body politic.

We don't know if the press or the White House will begin opening up this week, but if the public keeps pressing, it should only be a matter of time.

-- To submit and vote on potential questions for President Obama through our project, which has already gathered over 28,000 votes in five days, visit Ask The President now.

To learn more about the project, check out these articles from The Nation and The Washington Times.

To read a response to some input and criticism of the project, see this blog comment.

And to see a YouTuber taking up the challenge, check out this new video:

Comments (12)

1. How exactly are they "citizen's questions" or even "participatory media"...

   if the network guys are going to have some final say over the question selections (out of 1000s)?

   You think some RESE (our former conspiracy theorist) question is going to get asked ("Mr. President, what are you doing about closing down those concentration camps that Cheney built"?)...or a syfriendly question like "When are you going to embargo Israel and call them 'like Nazi Germany'?"....or even a right-winger like RIO/comanche like "When are you going to admit you're a radical socialist Muslim Undemocrat who wants to impose a totalitarian state?"

   If those questions or even the tamer ones don't get through...then it's merely Chuck Todd or Jake Tapper asking the same ordinary questions that any WH journalist would ask...isn't it?

   Posted by Mask at 03/23/2009 @ 11:09am

2. Sorry, MELBER,....almost 3 hours....and Nobody cares....just thought, FYI....:)

   Posted by Happy at 03/23/2009 @ 11:27am

3. participatory democracy: "FANFRIGGENTASTIC"!!!

   Posted by julien38 at 03/23/2009 @ 11:48am

4. There is something fundamentally wrong with this picture.

   Posted by ACook at 03/23/2009 @ 12:28pm

5. Posted by ACook at 03/23/2009 @ 12:28pm

   I wouldn't say that....she's pretty cute.

   Posted by Mask at 03/23/2009 @ 12:42pm

6. "Ask the President" uses a voting system that's been repeatedly shown to result in the weakest questions being selected. In this case, those weak questions will then be filtered by an MSM journalist, and the MSM hasn't exactly shown an interest in asking real questions.

   For a tangible example, which question would get more votes: 1. A nerdy policy wonk asking a boring but very important question, or 2. An ObamaGirl video.

   We know the answer, and that problem should have been obvious to Ari Melber from the beginning. Isn't it likely that Ari Melber isn't really interested in having real questions asked but is simply interested in putting on a show?

   For more on the flawed system they're using and past examples of it failing, see this:

   http://24ahead.com/s/popular-voting-systems

   Posted by HotSopDotCom at 03/23/2009 @ 12:47pm

7. Judging from her attire and her posture... I'll skip this video...

   Mask... I Laughed out loud, and heartily!

   But the article is right... if you take out the fringe elements by using common sense and decency, rather than political motivation.

   BTW... mask... are you on some anti-fringe vendetta or what?...;^)

   Posted by ttr at 03/23/2009 @ 1:11pm

8. Ari, below is a question that I have posted on chuck Todd's site for President Obama. You may want to consider using this question as a basis for an article in the Nation ... or maybe not!

   Mr. Obama, should the USA pay reparation payments to the ethnic Kurdish minority in Turkey and the ethnic Macedonian minority in Greece for the American role, as a member of Nato in the aiding and abetting the attempt by the Turkish and Greek governments to "wipe off the map" their respective ethnic Kurdish and ethnic Macedonian minorities?

   Backgrounder on Repression of the Kurds in Turkey

   Denying Ethnic Identity: The Macedonians of Greece

   My blog:

   The Macedonian Tendency (new)

   The Macedonian Tendency (old)

   My "Salade Macedoine" Politics

   Posted by David Edenden at 03/23/2009 @ 1:38pm

9. I would like to suggest a way to assist the economy through everyone who pays taxes receiving a debt card issue by the government. This debt card cannot be used for cash, paying off a bill...must be used for a purchase in our economy. In fact, certain professions could be eliminated for the use of the debt card. There would be a time limit on the use of the debt card and after that..it is dead.

   Michael Keller

   Posted by mkeller at 03/23/2009 @ 8:25pm

10. I wouldn't say that....she's pretty cute.

    Posted by Mask at 03/23/2009 @ 12:42pm

    I wasn't talking about the video, I was commenting about "Ask the President Anything" forum. It's a complete waste of valuable time.

    Posted by ACook at 03/23/2009 @ 9:20pm

11. A waste of time, "ACook"? Compared to what? Compared to posting your opinions here?

    Posted by JakobFabian at 03/24/2009 @ 07:14am

12. ask obama how many trillions in toxic assets are in the hands of say the richest 0.1% and to which extent his plans to "save the financial system" will save these billionaires ; and ask him whether he thinks the citizenry would want to pay for the financial gambling follies of the richest 0.1%, etc. if it was asked the question directly.

    Posted by erplus at 03/24/2009 @ 07:59am