That’s a dopey question
By Sumir Singh

With the advent of new media like blogs, Facebook and Twitter, politicians and pop stars were happy they could talk directly to the public.  No more dependency on the whims of Editors and reporters working for TV Stations and print newspapers. Stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Tharoor and Chetan Bhagat use blogs and Twitter to talk to the Indian public. And the public like having the opportunity to talk to such leaders.

While this has lead to a more democratic media, there are still lines which cannot be crossed.

Google’s YouTube teamed with the Office of the President of USA to conduct a live YouTube interview at the White House on Feb 1, 2010. The public submitted 14,500 questions and 772,394 votes were cast to work out which were the most pressing issues.  The idea was that the more people voted for a question, the better the chance of it being put to President Obama.

The top 2 questions for President Obama were: "What are you doing to bring manufacturing back to the United States?" and "What is your current stance on the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana? Thank you Mr. President".

But YouTube decided to play it safe by not asking the marijuana question to President Obama.  In this case, Google’s YouTube wanted to be safe than sorry.  What if the President was embarrassed and refused to give another interview?  What if people thought YouTube was pro soft drugs? 

While campaigning for President, Obama had admitted to ‘smoking and inhaling’ during a shaky phase of his youth. President Bush and President Clinton also admitted to what they described as youthful follies. Medical Marijuana is available is many States. A very substantial part of the American population believes in the decriminalization of such soft drugs. So, many would considerable such a question to be legitimate in an American political context.

President Obama has every right to continue the war on drugs. But it just seems wrong that YouTube would ask the public for input and then withdraw a popular question just because it may embarrass the President. It seems that crowdsourcing only goes that far.