Searching for an honest platform owner

Wednesday, May 30. 2007

I had a little culture shock moving from the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City on Friday to PBS's Showcase in Dallas the following Monday. The PDF was chock full of politico-webbies who brought the wifi to its knees with live blogging, twitter, and back-channel chat. PBS's conference rooms didn't offer wifi. At the PDF Lawrence Lessig spoke to a full house about the importance of getting copyright right while at the Summit the focus was on "The War" though there was some confusion about which war (turns out it is "The Great War"). In New York talk was about elections. The last panel featured web staff from Bush & Kerry 2004, and Obama, Clinton, Romney, McCain, and Edwards 2008 who talked a lot about how they were using social networking sites to build support. While in Dallas, maybe a third of attendees stuck around to listen to new VP of Interactive, Jason Seiken, late of WashingtonPost.com and AOL, promise that introducing a PBS social network was one of two top priorities for 2007.

This last bit caught my attention, and not only because it helped fill the room for the panel I was on about social media. Listening to the PDF crowd talk about whether it is legal to repurpose video of presidential debates (it is determined by the debate broadcasters!) and MoveOn's attack on censorship at MySpace. I yearned for a trustworthy and civic-minded host for our democratic dialogue. We are sure that politicians will increasingly rely on online services to deliver and develop messages. Right now the online services they use are commercial – Youtube owned by Google, MySpace owned by News Corp, -- or partisan (re: MoveOn.org and Townhall.com). Who will provide us an "honest platform" for learning, discussion, and debate? PBS has the distributed network of member stations, a public outreach mission, and the trusted brand that would be perfect for this role. All that is missing is the gumption. Maybe Seiken and a small group of PBS innovators can make it happen.

I should also say that PBS had better schwag. I particularly appreciate my "Best of Austin City Limits 2007" CD!

Posted by Dave Witzel in Collaboration at 16:42 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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PBS is NOT trusted, it turns out. By liberals but not by conservatives. Sorry to break it to you. So: Keep searching.

#1 You almost got it right. on 2007-06-01 10:04 (Reply)

I may be optimistic here. I'm thinking that PBS may have the scale required to engage with Google, News Corp, Viacom, etc. while having genuine local representations via the individual stations that can overcome purely liberal vs. conservative labels and foster genuine dialog.

If not, PBS, then who?

#1.1 Dave Witzel on 2007-06-01 10:22 (Reply)

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Influence covers innovations in communication, Internet technology and strategy to generate influence on important public policy issues. Chris Wolz manages this blog with the help of his colleagues at Forum One Communications, a web strategy/technology firm in the Washington DC area.