Washington (CNN) – Moments after President Obama addresses the nation about the oil spill Tuesday in a primetime address, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will field questions about the situation that were submitted online by the public.
The White House will have final say on what questions are presented, but White House spokesman Nick Shapiro noted that Gibbs will answer the most popular in each category.
"The questions will be voted on by the public and the popular questions will rise to the top," Shapiro said in an e-mail.
In a short video posted on the White House's YouTube channel, Gibbs invites the public to submit questions through an online platform called Google Moderator. The Google tool allows users to submit questions in several categories including "BP Accountability," "Cleanup Plan," "Gulf Region recovery," "Environmental impact," and "Other" as well as express approval or disapproval through "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" icons for each question.
Earlier this year, after his first State of the Union address, Obama personally took questions submitted by YouTube users during an interview distributed on the popular online video site.
- CNN Audience Interaction Producer Eric Kuhn contributed to this report.
Clean-up the cronyism and corruption. Time to ban public officials from being allowed to go work for the industries they are suppose to be regulating. Obama please put the hammer down and nail these sheisters.
So the White House will have the final say in the questions presented.Code for i'll only take those questions that i have a prepared answer for.Just shameful !!!
Clueless Gibbs answering questions about what clueless Obama is doing. Oh, now this should be just classic.
funny; they always screen the questions they take and of course only answer or spin would be the better word the ones that make Obama look good.
All I can say about Gibbs answering the most "popular" questions....yeah right!!
What a bunch of political dog doo. Do you believe for one second the White House is not going to control the questions? The questions they do respond to will have been run through the entire staff ror controlled answers. Great Job Obama!
Why is the media wasting its (our time) with this mumbling idiot. To begin, he really never answers a question posed to him. He ah, ah, mumbles on and never really addresses the real question.
Besides, he knows nothing about dealing with an oil spill or anything else for that matter; just like his ignorant/lying boss.
Yes Gibbs will answer questions that were submitted before hand. Obama is not even allowed to talk to the public anymore. Prewritten speeches and then answers to presubmitted questions answered by press secretary. Our president is MIA
submitted online by members of the DNC and WH staff.
thank goodnes for a whe house with new inovative ideas. I think tey are doing a good job conscidering the bad situation in the gulf.
What do we have? This is exactly why the government needs to act as a regulatory body... to prevent disasters like this from happening. The Bush administration and Republican policies are largely to blame for this disaster.
I normally support President Obama in his responses to crises.
Tonight however, I am disappointed. The only question I want answered is when willl the leak be capped?
Everything else is peripheral to that central question.
All of the responses as to future solutions, going forward, etc. that the president presented, did not address the central issue which is immediate and NOW!!
We cannot move forward with solutions for the future until the oil spill is stopped!
I did not hear anything to address this central question. We cannot move on until it is addressed!
We are drowning in oil right NOW!! We need immediate solutions from the federal government since BP's response is TOO SLOW!!
If we can send people into space at will, and do any other number of astounding feats of engineering and science, we MUST be able to end this torture we are suffering in the Gulf quickly in order to move forward with the future proposals from the president that we heard tonight!
Obama may be clueless, but Gibbs is an IDIOT!
what brain trust thought voting on questions would be a good idea? Is that supposed to make the selection of questions better? It is a technique to avoid unpleasant topics just like the rest, but you will be using "popular questions" to somehow say ... well it wasn't asked
nice, at least you are entertaining
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference what the President says, it will never satisfy the lunatic fringe because they refuse to be satisfied. BTW, What would "President Mc Cain" have done differently?