"The Only Way to Combat Falsehood is to Tell the Truth": YouTube and Diplomacy

Today in class, we had to come up with different ways of campaigning and politically advertising using new and old media. One method that I suggested to my group was an idea that people could submit questions and the candidate could address these issues in a YouTube video that would be posted on the candidate's Facebook page, blog, and website. This idea actually wasn't so original; I had gotten the idea from the "World View" project, which encourages people to post videos with questions to specific world leaders and selected video questions are asked in an interview with this leader. I had not heard about this project, which began in January, until recently when I found out that they were going to interview Prime Minister Netanyahu. However, the organization has already interviewed President Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, and Speaker of the House John Boehner. Today, the interview with Bibi Netanyahu was put on YouTube, and although it is long for a YouTube clip, it is very interesting and definitely worth watching.

This project definitely brings up new questions and shows the evolution of media. It is a good way of campaigning (or in this case, practicing diplomacy) because the people feel like you are talking directly to them, and answering their questions makes them feel important and satisfied. It is a more personal approach and it kind of reminds me of FDR's fireside chats in that it is the president or prime minister directly addressing the people and telling them what they need to know to be satisfied.

Although I've only watched Netanyahu's interview so far, I think it is a very interesting and innovative program. I did not appreciate the tone of the interviewer, but I think Netanyahu did a good job despite her aggressiveness. Although he was a bit repetitive, his message was clear: Palestinians need to recognize Israel in order to achieve peace, and that Arabs have a lot of freedom in Israel. It was important to educate people of facts they did not know, as Netanyahu himself says, "the only way to combat falsehood is to tell the truth."

This is what "new media" allows for: the politician himself to tell the people in plain words what "the story is." It is not being reported through a bias newspaper or television reporter, rather it is straight from his mouth to your ears.