Guest Commentary: May we ask you a few questions please? A Citizen Journalism Experiment by Chip Dizard

April 24, 2008

By Heber Brown, III

Yesterday I was on assignment to cover the Pennsylvania Primary for My Urban Report.com. I have to tell you that I am an Obama supporter, but I had our team out getting un-biased coverage of all candidates—we even reached out to the Republicans and interviewed a McCain supporter.

reporter

Our reporter, Adrienne Hall asked four questions:
1. Who do you support and why?

2. What issues are important to you in your decision to support the candidate?

3. Do you think the (mainstream)media has been doing a good (fair) job in covering the candidates and the issues?

4. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I thought these questions were fair and gave each side to present their case. The interesting thing that came across is that a majority of Hillary Clinton supporters wanted to know the questions in advance and where was this going to air and why where we there? Of course, you know where I am going—the race card. Yes, our crew was all black and one of our workers had a Barack shirt on at first, but I intentionally asked him to wear another one so people wouldn’t feel the bias. Does every African-America support Obama? No—we have evidence here when we interviewed Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones of Ohio. (see photo)

Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (Hilary Clinton supporter)

The interesting part was that most of the Obama supporters both white and black didn’t ask for the details of questions at all. Is there really a racial divide in our Democratic party and we are just too scared to talk about it—that is another blog post in itself, so I digress.

For those of you who are skeptical, I am looking to partner with a another production company out of Charlotte, North Carolina (who happens to have an all white crew) and they will ask the same questions and represent myurbanreport.com during the May 6 primary in North Carolina.

Chip Dizard Chip Dizárd is the Co-Founder and Creative Director of Absolute Presence, a web site development firm that began in 2002. He has worked on many diverse projects and clients which include church and ministry web sites, political campaign, business and most recently in May of 2007 his firm designed and implemented the official web site of the City of Baltimore. Visit Absolute Presence today! (He’s also a blogger.)