This just in - CNN/most MSM drops ball on Iranian election story, Twitter recovers and scores.
June 14, 2009 by T-Bone · Leave a Comment
On 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.

