We really need to have a talk about this Twitter thing. I don't have a problem with the concept, but something has gone terribly wrong if CNN has started to think that Twitter is a substitute for hard reporting. It's fine if we all "microblog" to each other about the banality of our own lives, but we can't start pretending that Twitter is a valid news source. It's an intrinsic law of Internet usage most of what you read there is fake.
I suppose we should have seen this coming; text messaging was the real start of this mess. After it grew out of its illiterate and incoherent infancy ("lol hi dood c u 2nite!"), text messaging became the precursor to the modern tweet. With the advent of mass texting, rumors, stories and general life updates could spread across the globe as fast as angst-ridden teenagers could mash them into their phones. It even started to sound vaguely intelligent as our phones learned how to correct our spelling and finish what we wanted to say before we entered it. The only thing missing was a mass-delivery system. So Twitter was born.
Now, Twitter has infested countless icons of our culture, from basketball superstar Shaquille O'Neal to mythbuster Adam Savage; the White House has even developed a mysterious consciousness just to be on Twitter. But the line was crossed when news outlets started to rely on Twitter for their coverage of the ongoing protests in Iran. Gone are the days of tracking sources, fact checking and hard reporting; in this age of American sheepishness, "I read it on the Internet" is valid proof. Do people think that every "FML" submitted is a true story and that every "textfromlastnight" is a cryptic mini-biography of some hung-over college student?
Why do I resent this latest trend in media lunacy? Because I refuse to believe that the indescribable horror, sorrow and bravery found on the streets of Tehran can be done any poetic justice in the span of 140 characters. My news sources are just feeding me the emotional sentiments that, while shocking, are just what one would expect from a protest movement. Can CNN not find a single person to call and ask, "Hey, what's going on there right now?" and get the real scoop on the state of affairs on the streets of Tehran? Twitter is a social networking tool, not some Cliff's Notes for journalists. Can you imagine if Twitter had been around during the Lewinsky Scandal? "CNN recently uncovered startling new evidence from Ms. Lewinsky's Twitter page, where she tweeted Gosh, he's big!'"
I've heard the arguments that it's hard to get information about Iran because most foreign reporters have been forced out of the country, but frankly, that's not good enough. Reporters weren't allowed into Nixon's secret meetings, but they still managed to uncover the Watergate scandal. There are more ways to get your facts straight than sending Anderson Cooper and his team of makeup artists to Tehran, and media outlets have been using them for years. Are they really going to give up just because Iran told them to get out?
But even if we could magically confirm that such "tweets" were true, that still wouldn't justify their regular use in professional environments. You just can't make convincing arguments in the span of 140 characters.
I'm glad the Internet is relaying to me simple emotional tidbits like that the protesters are angry, and that when the police intervene, it can produce some truly ghastly results, but I want more from my journalists. They're supposed to be the ones that get the information hidden even from the throng of people on the streets. They're supposed to break surprising stories that jar my conception of what the protest is about. Even a heart-wrenching expose about one 13-year-old's struggle in the crowd would be better at this point. Wolf Blitzer and his full-size magic screen provide me no more than what my 17-inch computer monitor could tell me.
The widespread use of Twitter amongst the protesters is a noteworthy news story in its own right, but the news media has diverted my attention to its own ineptitude. Leave the social networking to troubled teenagers who think the world wants to hear their pouting and soccer moms who want to tell everyone about "there little angels." CNN should strive to resemble a news desk rather than a Facebook homepage.
