CNN planted question at debate, student says

CNN
Another example of the Media trying to make the news instead of just reporting it.

BBB

Did any of the candidates have the guts and wherewithal to say Linux?

That would go a long way toward winning my vote.

Thanks for bringing this, BBB.
I think its the tip of the iceberg.
There should be a consequence.

According to local radio/newspapers here ALL of the questions where screened by CNN or planted by them. Everyone who was invited to attend was aksed to submit questions to CNN and CNN chose which ones would be asked or gave them other questions of their choosing to ask.

There was a large write-up in the Boston Globe the other day about the girl that asked the question about who each candidate would like to party with. CNN also picked the people that sat in the audience.

The entire event was a CNN production.

'Light' Not Quite Right for This Forum
washingtonpost.com
'Light' Not Quite Right for This Forum
By Howard Kurtz
Tuesday, November 11, 2003; Page A04

The student who asked the most ridiculed question at CNN's "Rock the Vote" debate last week -- "Macs or PCs?" -- says it wasn't her idea.

Alexandra Trustman said yesterday that a CNN producer called her on the morning of the Boston forum and suggested she ask about the Democratic presidential candidates' computer preferences. Puzzled by the request, she writes in Brown University's Daily Herald, she drafted a more complicated question about how the candidates would use technology.

But in Boston, Trustman said, she was handed a notecard with the digital-age equivalent of the boxers-or-briefs choice put to Bill Clinton. She wrote that she told the producer "I didn't see the question's relevance," but that he rejected her proposed query "because it wasn't light-hearted enough and they wanted to modulate the event with various types of questions."

Trustman said she was informed that the network "thought it would be a good opportunity for the candidates to relate to a younger audience."

CNN spokesman Matthew Furman said, "In an attempt to encourage a lighthearted moment in this debate, a CNN producer working with Ms. Trustman clearly went too far. CNN regrets the producer's actions."

Trustman is clearly miffed by the criticism: "Not one person bothered to inquire or find out the truth about the incident."