Presidential YouTube Interview - behind the scenes

Here are a few clips from our preparation for the YouTube interview we did with President Obama on Monday, February 1st, 2009. We started our preparation in Davos during the World Economic Forum, where we were working on the Davos Debates (youtube.com/davos). When we heard the President had accepted the request for the interview, we had to get started right away and then fly back to DC for the taping.

Here's the interview itself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pqzNJYzh7I

We weren't allowed to film any behind the scenes footage from inside the White House, but you'll see here some footage of our practice and prep. The quip about the brown socks at the end is referencing the fact that Steve neglected to color code properly, and then exposed his brown sox during the interview, which drew some comments from viewers on YouTube.

Featured here are Steve Grove, Olivia Ma, Ramya Raghavan, and Aaron Zamost from YouTube, and Ginny Hunt who leads the Google Moderator team.

You can follow us on @citizentube, @grove, @oliviama, and @ramchopps

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• youtube
• interview
• president
• obama
• citizentube
• white
• house
• behind
• the
• scenes
• steve
• grove

[PartVIII]

Why wasnt the president asked the question that was voted #1 under the Other section?

[DrCrYz]

@citizentube Why didn't you ask the question about marijuana?

[ForexReviewsCentral]

nice share. 

[alifaqmal]

great shoot.

[OneNOnlyFreshman]

Are you serious citizentube? I mean really, you didn't ask the one question that was listed 200 times, all most voted on the list?! Legalization, it's a serious topic. This is not a joke like you seem to think. Ask the damn questions that WE VOTE FOR. Were you paid off to not ask that question or something? Seriously, give us an answer.

[theclockstickin]

Hey Steve, I was in contact with you a few years ago and you were nice enough to post my Darfur Rap on the front of the politics section of Youtube. With all the earthquakes going on in the world, I decided to make an educational song about what to do in an earthquake. The video is on my profile and I was wondering if you could just watch it. Thanks, and sorry I couldn't send you a message, you've enabled friend lock.

[teamhalo2444]

fuck you citizen tube, thanks for not asking the top question! And you pussies wont even tell us why you censored it!

[TheFamousStacie]

So now, I'm like, 1 degree away from the President.  Wow! Nice scarf

[abcdrcill1]

:36 "Some of them we might not have expected, but they were voted to [the] top and so we're going to use them"

This implies that you intended to ask the top question regarding marijuana policy, but you didn't ask the question.

So either you're a censoring s**thead or the questions were pre-screened by the president and/or his staff and the marijuana question was cut out.

Either way, this is not good journalism.

[yoplaitmajor]

So invent your own idea and ask for access to the President. I am certain that your wit and charm will open the gates.

[redhawk99]

Shame on GOOGLE! Censoring AMERICAN's most popular question to their president about Marijuana prohibition vs legalization.

Google should not complain about the Chinese government but about their own censorship of the most basic political dialog in America.

End the madness. Legalize it!