The Good Question Project

Here’s a simple request: If you are watching tonight’s “town-hall”-style presidential debate and want to share your opinion on the questions voiced by audience members, use #GoodQ or #BadQ to hashtag your comments.

If possible (and we know this is hard to know in the middle of a live event), add a few words to your tweet to refer to the question in some identifiable way, such as “#GoodQ from the schoolteacher about education policy” or “#BadQ from the redhead about Afghanistan.”

Even more helpful, add a few words explaining why you think the question was either good or bad.

Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin obtained a copy of the secret agreement between the Obama and Romney campaigns governing their participation in the 2012 presidential debates, and the conditions placed on audience participation in tonight’s “town-hall” style event are positively draconian:

“Questioners shall not makes statements, speeches, or comments. They must ask their question as originally submitted and selected by the moderator and make no other comments.

“The moderator will not ask follow up questions or make comments either on the questions asked by the audience or the answers of the candidate…”

“The audience members shall not ask follow-up questions or otherwise participate in the extended discussion, and the audience member’s microphone shall be turned off after he or she finishes asking the questions.

“If any audience member poses a question or makes a statement that is in any material way different than the question that the audience member earlier submitted to the moderator for review, the moderator will cut-off the questioner and advise the audience that such non-reviewed questions are not permitted.

“Moreover, the Commission [on Presidential Debates] shall take appropriate steps to cut-off the microphone of any such audience member who attempts to pose any question or statement different than that previously posed to the moderator for review. The moderator will inform the audience of this provision prior to the debate.”

These are provisions worthy of North Korea. But we don’t live in North Korea. There is nothing to prevent one of the town hall audience members, or the debate moderator Candy Crowley, from ignoring them. As far as I know, they haven’t signed this contract or any other, and the First Amendment should still apply.

“Number of questions Jim Lehrer raised about issues important but neglected so far in 2012: zero. Number of times he tried to do that: zero.”
–Jay Rosen on Jim Lehrer’s performance as the moderator of the first 2012 presidential debate between Obama and Romney

David Corn, the Washington editor of Mother Jones magazine, was asked this question last week while doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) session:

Dirty Projector: Why don’t more journalists call out politicians on their bullshit? Most politicians flat out lie to the public, and no one holds them accountable. Is it a fear that they will be black listed?
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David Corn: Good question. This is something I’ve pondered and written about many a time.

See
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/factcheck-politifact-lying-politicians
and
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/09/after-w-will-press-get-spine
I think there’s a lot of factors. Beat reporters often don’t like to be too antagonistic toward their subjects, for this will affect their ability to get information from them. MSMers often feel it is not their place to render such judgements and believe it is their job to convey what the pols are saying and let the public reach its own conclusions. I disagree (what a surprise!) and believe the press needs to be aggressive in policing the pols and in calling out untruths. I’m heartened to see more of that in the MSM, via factchecking (see the first piece above), but this recent trend in the media has had its rocky moments.

If the media is the immune system of democracy, as Craig Newmark likes to say, then the act of asking questions of the powerful might be thought of as the mitochondria, the energy source that powers the immune system. A good question is one that presents its recipient with a problem that must be resolved. It may raise uncomfortable facts, or highlight a contradiction, or merely demand that its subject explain him or herself on a topic they have avoided or would prefer to not address. It may crystallize a topic that is on a lot of people’s minds but hasn’t been surfaced yet. Good questions insist on accountability, and good questioners insist on real answers, not obfuscations.

When we as a society, and the press in particular, fail to ask good questions of those with power or those who act in our name, our immune system weakens and democracy falters. So, my question is: how can we foster the asking of more good questions?

Today there are two kinds of people who can ask questions of the powerful: those who have an investigative role as part of their job description (journalists, cops, prosecutors, judges), and ordinary citizens. I’m not sure what can be done to make our legal system ask more questions, but I do think there are some things we can do to improve the behavior of journalists and ordinary citizens.

What if we rewarded good questions with public praise, and punished dumb questions (or failures to ask) with shame? Furthermore, what if we built a supply of good questions, so professional and citizen journalists alike could draw on collective intelligence to focus attention where it might be needed? Sometimes, very useful questions are asked of the powerful by ordinary people, in part because the powerful avoid the press, in part because the professional press sometimes shies away from offending the powerful, and in part because ordinary people get occasional opportunities to ask unexpected questions.

Think of Temple University graduate student Michael Rovito, who happened to walk up to GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin while she was picking up some cheesesteaks at a restaurant in South Philadelphia. At the time Palin was avoiding all contact with the press. Rovito asked her about the situation in Pakistan and whether the U.S. should do cross-border raids from Afghanistan to stop terrorists. She said she favored such action, even though her running mate John McCain had just criticized President Obama for doing exactly that. Rovito asked Palin a good question, and received a revealing response (which was dutifully reported by the press).

At the same time, professional journalists often fail to ask good questions of powerful politicians, and instead act more like talk-show personalities seeking to keep the audience entertained. As Jay Rosen and Amanda Michel showed in their study of the 839 questions asked during 20 Republican debates held during the primary election season, there is a wide divergence as well between the topics the public is interested in and the topics professional journalists often ask during those debates. The public never asks for questions about polls or negative ads, for example, yet those questions come up frequently (13% of the total). Huge topics, like climate change, Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, education, small business, and how to prevent another economic crash came up just 23 times in all, or just about 3% of the total.

What to do? Let’s start with this:

If you see or read about a good question asked in public, use the hashtag #GoodQ to highlight it. Email it to us here at the Good Question Project (goodquestionproject@gmail.com). Include a link to the article or the video documenting the question. And if you feel like it, add a note explaining why you thought it was a good question.

If you want to volunteer to be a Good Question spotter, just add this line to your email footer:

“Did you ask a good question today? Help the Good Question Project find and highlight good questions asked in public.”

And then let us know, so we can add you to our list of spotters.

Isidore Rabi, who won the 1944 Nobel Prize winner in physics, was asked how it was that he became a scientist. His reply: “My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask their child after school, So? Did you learn anything doay? But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “did you ask a good question today”? That difference—asking good questions—made me become a scientist.”

That difference can also make our democracy healthier. We may not all agree on absolute truths, but if we keep asking good questions we can drive out foolishness and falsehood.