Archive for the ‘accountability’ tag
Better Questions. Better Interviews. Better News.
better questions = more nervous politicians = better news
There’s an awful lot of talk about accountability these days. Almost as much as there is about the death of journalism. But there’s a simple way to help out on both fronts. Better questions by our interviewers of our leaders, representatives and people in power.
Most questions are open-ended and long. That gives the interviewee a time to think up a good response and ramble tangentially, because they’re asked what they think – which is usually answered by what they don’t think at all. Far better would be shorter, closed questions that are looking for concrete yes or no based responses. Less time to think of an answer. Less wriggle room for the interviewee to squirm out of trouble, and more opportunity for strong supplemental questions.
If you’re interested in helping to deliver better questions to our journalists and you’re on Twitter, or you’re thinking of joining, follow The Question Bar and submit a question that will posterize that politician.
Enough With the Accountability Mr O.
accountability, shmaccountability. just make the damn plan work already
I’m a huge fan of accountability, I think it’s great. But government is a big place. The idea of opening up all government business to accessible public scrutiny adds little value. It will only create confusion. Sifting through and understanding the data remains the key, and guess who’s going to be able to do that. The same people who knew how to access the information before it was put on recovery.gov. In short, it’s 10% useful, 10% public relations, and 80% window dressing.
Accountability to the public has its place. And that place is called democracy. Every two years we get to hold our legislators accountable and every four years the President and his party gets the same treatment. It’s not a great system but it kind of works. The dirty little secret is this. Too much ‘demos’ in democracy is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, in these perilous times when leadership has never been more important, it might actually spell disaster at precisely the wrong moment in our history.