What’s With the News?!
I am not entirely sure if anyone else has noticed this, but as of maybe about a month (possibly longer) ago, major news stations and programs have started using Twitter for… well, to replace their actual reporting content. I mean, even CNN (yes, the one and only) uses Twitter.
For the past few days I’ve been following some of Obama’s speeches on CNN and I often hear the host say something along the lines of “Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Tweet us about ____________!”. And then, in about half an hour, they will “report” on a bunch of people’s Tweets. Now, I don’t mean to disrespect the valid opinions of others on the Internet, but I don’t turn on CNN for listening to often misinformed, disillusioned, and biased personal opinions. Actually, that’s not too far from the good old CNN we grew up with. Then again, at least with the old CNN they didn’t need to place a “CANNOT BE VERIFIED” label in the corner whenever they “report”.
What is even more disturbing is that CNN also takes material from other reputable Internet sources such as FACEBOOK and MYSPACE and handles it in a similar way. Yes, more of those “CANNOT BE VERIFIED” and “ONLY POTENTIALLY TRUE” stickers. I’m not usually a big follower of news or politics or anything like that, but this is one time where I find the trend and growing tendency towards relying on online information exchange inappropriate and mostly idiotic. I wonder how the reporters–who have likely gone through years of journalism studies–feel, now that they’ve essentially passed on their responsibility to truthful journalism to the loudest of our beloved Internet.
Totally ridiculous if you ask me.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Assuming this has to do with the post-election unrest in Iran, there’s a very good reason for that. Foreign reporters have basically been kicked out of the country and threatened with imprisonment or death. At the same time, the government has basically shut down most communications in the country and monitoring whatever’s left pretty closely.
This leaves a very limited channel through which people can get information out of the country. So protestors have been been communicating through Twitter, since it’s the fastest and easiest way to get information out, both to other protestors and the outside world. For the last few days, this has pretty much been the only reason we have as much information as we do.
On their own, individual tweets should be taken with a grain of salt, but when there are multiple sources of tweets, pictures, and video that all check out with each other, it’s pretty safe that that piece of information is trustworthy.
The reason CNN and the like are reporting like this now was because in the early days of the riots, there was almost zero coverage about it. As a result, they got lambasted for ignoring arguably one of the biggest international incidents in recent history.
By the time CNN and other TV news were reporting on the Iranian riots, most people who cared about it at that point were already getting firsthand updates from Twitter from a number of the Iranian protestors.
Beyond that, I’ve learned a while ago that TV news is pretty uniformly terrible. The depth of analysis and discourse of news on TV is really shallow and personally, I find it’s insulting to my intelligence. If you care at all about the news you’re getting, you should drop TV news and grab the RSS feeds of some good newspapers.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
‘cool illustrations even i would like’, what’s that supposed to mean? if you weren’t so totally correct, i’d be like, “you’re so totally wrong about this” >_>
June 20th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
@ kris I’m almost sure this is not the place for commenting about tweets.
@ N You must mean Tim, and y’know, your link was actually quite interesting to read. Like anything else on the internet, I read it with a grain of salt, but still, the ideas are pretty provoking.
@ Tim I know you like politics and you like exchange via the internet, but do check out what N posted about. What do you think? I think CNN is more than a little full of it at times. Sentiments shared by Jon Stewart too, apparently. His spiel about this made me laugh.
June 20th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Based on the results from Iran’s Interior Ministry, there are a number of things that don’t add up. On their own, they’re not really that interesting, but taken together, it raises some eyebrows. These are things like candidates losing in their home provinces and places where they were significantly ahead or enjoy significant support, based on polling and previous election results. And a bunch of other statistical and polling inconsistencies like that. Based on the number of these inconsistencies, it’s safe to say the official results are fraudulent.
As for the “proof” that those accounts are fakes, remember that there are photos and video to support their claims. This should be the biggest hint. Also, the reasons given were pretty bad. Seriously, “secret operatives destabilizing other nations” can be put right beside “9/11 truth” and other retarded conspiracy theories.
Remember that Iran is an authoritarian regime. If you wanted to get news out of the country and in front of an international audience, why wouldn’t you do it in English? And if you were trying to get news of oppression out of a country that locked down its communications and media, why would you post from a personal account? Of course those accounts were made right after the election, it’s to prevent the government from finding you. Why would there be a number of high profile tweets? Because there’s a lot happening. Why would they only be friends with other Iranian tweeters? Because Twitter was also their only means of communication with each other. Again, remember that Iran is an authoritarian state and didn’t want news of all of this getting out of the country.
What the “proof” of those accounts is that they are people who don’t want their identity to be known, whose sole purpose is to get information about what is going on out to as many people as possible. That sounds exactly like what an Iranian protester would want to do. Could it be Israeli operatives? Sure. It could also be me and a bunch of my friends, based on the supposed evidence. There’s nothing that’s on that page that raises the question of the authenticity of those Twitter accounts.
I try to watch CNN as little as possible, because every time I do, I feel stupider after I’m done each time.
June 21st, 2009 at 11:50 am
Iran isn’t an authoritarian regime. The Iranian government is ‘religious democracy’. Well, you are brainwashed by the western media.
ps: Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?” http://www.prisonplanet.com/are-the-iranian-protests-another-us-orchestrated-color-revolution.html
June 19th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
To Tom: CIA spends millions of dollars to destabilize the Iranian government. The Iranian government should do something to stop their dirty project.
related:
Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter
http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/proof-israeli-effort-to-destabilize-iran-via-twitter/