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This just in - CNN/most MSM drops ball on Iranian election story, Twitter recovers and scores.

June 14, 2009 by T-Bone 

screenshot_02On Friday, Iranian’s went to the polls to vote in their Presidential election.  Most of the mainstream media outlets have had tragically poor coverage, but CNN has had a near black-out on the story.  It’s only today that CNN has begun covering this election - on-air and online…  and mostly tossing out information that was available yesterday.  Right now, about 25% of the “Today’s Headlines” section of the CNN home page are about the Iranian election.  Also, in that same section, is an interesting question/story - “Do journalists Twitter too much?”  Interesting because, over the last 48 hours, Twitter users have been tearing CNN a new one.

On Twitter you can ‘tag’ your Tweets, to make them easier to find when someone does a search on Twitter, and an amazing number of people have taken to using “#CNNFail” over the networks lack-of-coverage on the election story.  Of course, there is no editorial-process on Twitter… and it’s hard to say how much of these “#iranelection” Tweets are true, or propaganda… are dorms really being attacked?  Are the opposition candidates under house-arrest?  The point isn’t that the ‘news’ on Twitter is accurate, the point is that there is ‘news’ on Twitter about the Iranian election.  And, the traditional ‘news’ organizations, at a time when they most need to demonstrate their utility, are completely, and totally, missing what is, potentially, the story-of-the-year - Iran’s very own Tiananmen Square.

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