How soon you forget the hell news organizations get for broadcasting incorrect information even from reliable sources. Now you want them to use sources so easily manipulated?

Technology doesn't produce news, people do. Reliable news comes from reliable people.

The people of the world look to America for guidance in their struggles for freedom. America is their hope. When American ignores them for "diplomatic reasons," hope is lost.

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/06/the-fog-of-blogs.html

Why did this happen to you? Back up and ponder your defaults, please:

1. You had a default prejudice looking for examples for "social media win" and "old media fail". When you look for things, you tend to find them even if they don't exist. You want very, very badly to show that new media, in which blogs like yours can get linked and win the attention economy, is better than old media, which isn't winning (except by in fact being the main source of recycled and biased opinion on new media lol).

2. You had an inherent leftist belief that America is to blame for everything in the world, and the funny inherent underlying imperialist correlation to that bias, the belief that America and its news channels can fix everything, too, if they don't "fail".

3. You had a poor grasp of what it means to take TV cameras and a sound boom and a team of reporters into a totalitarian country like Iran and the murderous dangers awaiting journalists.

4. You believed that what was on Twitter about Iran was "better" or "faster" when in fact you could only point to...one picture? One tweeter that you couldn't be sure was really there or not rebroadcasting? Er...maybe you found a few more? Let's see your links. Try to filter out talk ABOUT Iran with real actual fresh news *from* Teheran from people actually able to run their mobile phones, although the government shut them down.

5. You bought the conspiracy theory that even the New York Times seems to have fallen for that Western capitals an Israel had some stake in seeing the resistance fail because if they had a liberal to deal with in Iran, they'd then have no excuse to oppose Iran's nuclear programs.

6. You failed to realize that with any world event you have to follow a multiple of sources, whether BBC or CNN or Al Jazeer or Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe (which has had excellent coverage on Iran) -- or the scrum of Twitter and the scrim of blogs. You can't let the latter dictate your news diet.

Period.

The internet is the best way to stay informed and to spread information, and news networks are obsolete, whether you like it or not.

Until recently, they gave Glenn Beck several hours a day to foam at the mouth on TV.

Nancy Grace's constant pathetic pretend outrage is absurd, what a waste of airtime.

CNN, the news source, died long ago.

It would seem so, but it goes to executive management's lack of leadership and losing sight of core values. I was getting my journalism career started at a CNN bureau in 1989, and I still remember watching the wire and seeing Ted Turner himself cheering on and bolstering his beleaguered Beijing correspondents. Turner understood that one of the keys to CNN's success was overseas coverage -- while American networks was closing international news bureaus and turning inward to fluff and provincial consumerism, CNN was doing the opposite.

I can't even begin to imagine the executive beancounters and marketing drones at Time-Warner taking the same attitude toward CNN's product. It's not surprising that domestic CNN and CNN Heds are superficial jokes compared to the Beeb and CBC.

perhaps it's just the CNN.com web team that's incurring the wrath of news consumers

That's what happens in 2009 when the Web platform remains secondary to the top-down broadcast platform: fail.

also, did you look at cnn's US coverage or did you go to the international edition of cnn.com? that one is usually much more up-to-date with broader international stories.

Welcome to the world of every conservative everywhere.

Man up. Stop acting so "shocked" that CNN presents only liberal talking points. Say it, chastise them for it, and help them to survive. Dancing around what you know to be true doesn't help them, and makes you look stupid.

I don't mean the millions of *comments* on Twitter, the *noise* on Twitter copying old media.

I mean direct, live coverage on Twitter *from the scene*.

I found...one such person. @Change_for_Iran He/she is able to bravely tweet comments about crowds, police, even get a picture out now and then linked.

But, that's not CNN's replacement.

So please show me more like that, so I can then conclude, oh, yes, we now have Twitter to replace CNN.

Because so far, all I've heard at best is people saying "BBC is better" or "Al Jazeera" is better, but all sources are biased, and you need to triangulate, and CNN, which has a long history of attempting to cover this closed society and covered it well, is something I'm happy to wait for a day to get its ducks lined up as I make do with one brave Twitterer -- that a million comments do not replace.

It helps to pre-stuff the ballot box with the ruling party's choice, then they are easier to count, yes. Great idea!

Toni, there's something very wrong with your claim here, and your disconnect from the persons with knowledge from the scene below.

You say: "They have FAILED their audience. Period.
The internet is the best way to stay informed and to spread information, and news networks are obsolete, whether you like it or not."

Because how can you "stay informed" on an Internet that is...closed by the Iranian regime (!) -- unless you chatting with your followers on Twitter is a means of "staying informed".

Because look at what is being said here:

"Iran has an Internet adoption rate of somewhere in the 30%s"

and from farhad:

"Few hours after election lots of sites filtered like facebook friendfeed twitter ... mobile sms were blocked 1 day before election after election mobiles were busy
websites that owned to other candidate like mir hossein and rezaee were filtered and serveral times attacked to them...."

You see? You are viewing this problem through an ideological scrim, that you can see more manifest from all the other ranters here claiming this is all a conspiracy plot by Bush/Clinton/Zionists/etc to keep the people down and the excuse to deny nuclear capacity up.

But...this is a totalitarian regime that turned off all the cell phones and Internet during the elections, and when they were turned back on, seemed to mainly do so to let them tell the story of alleged massive support for this regime, with a few more attacks on independents to make the point.

Why were are supposed to expect CNN to work miracles here, when Twitter didn't, either, really, is beyond me.

I'm all manned up, thanks. And what's shocking to me isn't CNN, which does a good job, but the deep-seated belief that America should fix everything in the world because it's responsible for everything (inverse imperialism that only leads to stupid conspiracy theories) and that coverage of Iran depends not on CNN, but on whether the Iranian government allows news media and the Internet to operate freely and remain in service.

It doesn't, and it didn't.

#Irangovernmentfail

Iran ?

Wrong : Israel first, then USA and North Korea, then Iran.

go to www.cnn.com

Latest News

* Biden expresses 'doubts' about Iranian election
* iReport.com: Anger, violence in Tehran's streets
* Israel PM calls for demilitarized Palestinian state
* Poll: Half of Israelis open to bombing Iran

looks to me like top 4 stories have to do with Iran. Must be shocking for people that CNN must check out the info they are getting first.

WOW WTF

OK, the question of why CNN's US coverage is sometimes different from international is an interesting one, although it's hardly new. Unfortunately, in his eagerness to churn out this piece of linkbait riffing off the already tired Twitosphere vs MSM meme, Marshall has totally missed this juicy target.

I followed this story from the New York Times website. If this is an example of your typical 'reporting' then I think this is the last time I'm reading ReadWriteWeb, and I'm certainly writing to the NYT to suggest they stop reposting it.

Absolutely brilliant title!
The post wasn't to shabby either. :)

Cheers,
Ryan

Islamic republic might be able to hide te number of votes but this way they CAN NOT hide the number of people in the streets . Gandhi's strategy is a higher conscousness way to deal with any injustic.

If you agree please forward this to all Iranian BLOGS , Twitters, etc....

Thank you...Elham

AND A TRUE WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY MAY BE CRACKING OPEN A LITTLE BIT, FOR THE U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL MEMBER NATIONS TO THROW IT'S & THEIR COMBINED SUPPORT FOR SUCH A U.N. MANDATED AND RUN ELECTION.

AND A TRUE WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY MAY BE CRACKING OPEN A LITTLE BIT, FOR THE U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL MEMBER NATIONS TO THROW IT'S & THEIR COMBINED SUPPORT FOR SUCH A U.N. MANDATED AND RUN ELECTION.

How do you know people aren't making up ghost accounts on Twitter posing as people in Iran?

Who's to say that Twitter isn't the biggest propoganda pusher--that these are REAL people tweeting and not people with agendas?

What did Twitter do to foil the wrongdoing or reverse the election or change just about anything?