Comments on: Enough with the #CNNFail, or, Why Twitter's Failings Prove We Still Need Reporters

By: Siena

Siena — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:52:13 +0000

Funny, it's a small world. I was covering the genocide prevention conference in Montreal. I believe you must know a certain S. Walker from that event, among others.

By: jina

jina — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:57:51 +0000

George and Siena: Nice to have you on the blog, too! Even nicer, in fact, since I don't actually know you, and my friend Kris is, as my friend, a biased reader.:)

By: jina

jina — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:22:03 +0000

Thanks for sharing Andrew's item, Siena. Though I think he's off a bit: The hoo-ha over Twitter is as if your mother called your best friend's mother and told her something, and then that gossip landed on the front page as news, which implies verifiable fact.

George: That might have been a salient argument to make about CNN. But it's patently false about every other major media outlet. Including the ones I linked to. Most reporters anticipated this was a big story and got there; the NYT had three (!) staffers in that one country alone.

By: George D

George D — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:05:58 +0000

Wasn't the whole point that reporters were needed, they just weren't there?

By: Siena

Siena — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:56:44 +0000

And just to zap a bit of "reality" into this, from our lovely Andrew Sullivan's blog: Twitter is a method of communication, like the phone. Clearly, people can relay inaccurate information over the phone. But when you want to move information quickly, phones are invaluable. Similarly, twitter is very useful for moving (small amounts of) information from one person to multiple people very, very quickly. Does that sound obvious? It is. And yet for some reason people keep talking about twitter as if it were some sort of alien technology that is hard to understand. And, back to the original jest of my first post, "Most importantly, it means that this general atmosphere is converted into a forefront ‘global event’ which survives the media’s ADD." That's something the media sure can't do!

By: jina

jina — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:10:26 +0000

Now that's definitely true. The best the newspaper my parents read when I was a kid could do on that front was the letters to the editor page. Oh, and every year they published drawings by kids. Though presumably those were not supposed to be of revolution.

By: Siena

Siena — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:08:02 +0000

Good point and thanks for the comment. I think there's another aspect to this "social media" that moves it beyond a tool. More psychological though, and probably difficult to verify. Social media allows the masses to participate . This sense of self-empowerment and self-identification in very personal - and globally important - events. While I agree that journalists can harness these tools all they want - and probably more effectively than the average person - there's that opportunity for participation that far surpasses traditional media and engages individuals. Safe to safe, we need both.

By: jina

jina — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:22:43 +0000

Thanks, Kris! Nice to have you on the blog, and also, much obliged for the link to Evgeny's piece, too. (Though I credit (blame?) him with some of the #cnnfail craze, too. Maybe unfairly.)

By: Kris Kotarski

Kris Kotarski — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:19:50 +0000

Excellent take, Jina. As far as #CNNfail, it does not necessarily mean #allmediafail. Evgeny Morozov posted a great comment on the whole phenomenon arguing for something (a publicly-funded station?) to supplement the infotainment on cable TV, and I agree with his take 100 per cent. In either case, I hope that reporters continue to report, since, like you pointed out, we need accurate and reliable reporting to make Twitter/Facebook etc. worthwhile in the first place.

http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/...international_news