Let what’s public be public and free
CNN has announced last Saturday that all their video coverage of the upcoming United States presidential debates, beginning with the ones in New Hampshire next June, will be “made available without restrictions at the conclusion of each live debate”, apparently under a Creative Commons license. The reasons for this choice are made very clear in the announcement (bold face added for emphasis):
“Due to the historical nature of presidential debates and the significance of these forums to the American public, CNN believes strongly that the debates should be accessible to the public. The candidates need to be held accountable for what they say throughout the election process. The presidential debates are an integral part of our system of government, in which the American people have the opportunity to make informed choices about who will serve them. (…) We believe this is good for the country and good for the electoral process.”
This means the broadcasts will be made available to anyone and it will be possible to freely post them on the Internet to reach the widest possible audience. I agree strongly with this decision. The people who vote must have the ability do so in an as an informed manner as possible, without any filter from the media or commentary exclusively aimed at swerving the people’s decision. There will always be commentary and it will hardly ever be unbiased (it should be every person’s right to have a free opinion), but I believe this is a good step in the right direction because it helps the public be able to take decisions based on facts, rather than only on the opinion of the most prevalent news media.
A similar move had been demanded to the whole media world for some time by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig (founder of Creative Commons), soon joined by Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama, John Edwards and Chris Dodd and representatives from many organizations like the the Electronic Frontier Foundation and MoveOn. To my knowledge, no Republican candidate has so far supported the decision to release said video material under a free license (but correct me if I’m wrong).
Others are in any case reasoning in opposite ways: MSNBC has released clips (rather than the whole video) of the first debates in Windows Media format (MSNBC comes from the partnership between NBC and Microsoft), with commercials, prohibiting their airing and archival after May 26 and with other restrictions. That’s too bad; trusting voters to form a critic opinion on their own, letting them freely and directly hear what candidates have to say, is a priceless opportunity to promote transparency, integrity and respect for the voters themselves. An opportunity that apparently CNN has not wasted, but that too many others fail to recognize.
