#CNNFail, Iran, Twitter, and Sunday morning
As I succinctly noted on Twitter, my morning roughly started as follows:
I woke up, fired up coffee, eggs, ham, and toast (which constitutes a fancy breakfast in my house). Checked e-mail and hit the front page of The New York Times online, which is oddly making its way back around to being one of my daily check-in sites. I was particularly interested and anxious to find out the latest going on in Iran. This story — Opposition Members Detained in a Tense Iran — was both informative and chilling.
I then browsed Memeorandum and Techmeme and was interested to see that both sites’ top stories focus on CNN’s lack of Iran coverage (particularly in terms of protests and election fraud allegations), with the added bonus that Twitter has become a central source for 1) on-the-ground coverage in a country where open communication is being stifled and 2) watch dogging CNN (with handy hashtag #CNNFail) on its lack of focus on this breaking story.
It is extraordinary that we’ve reached an age where Twitter can massively amplify on-the-ground coverage AND watch dog the mainstream press
Ernest Koe soon responded:
@ericberlin we seem to be witnessing a watershed moment in history #iranelection #iranfail, breath-taking and scary at the same time
A couple of final thoughts:
1) A minor point: CNN, which played a part in really breaking Twitter to the mainstream audience, is learning that social media can both giveth and taketh away
2) Something less minor: I’d like to believe that online participation at the scale we’re now seeing has the power to directly impact governments and institutions and organizations in a positive way. In a major way.
