Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter for News About Iran
Note: This post was written at midnight PST last night, at which point CNN.com was hours behind much of the rest of online media in prioritizing the big news in Iran. The site has since focused on Iran but we believe this post remains relevant in discussing concerns about what sources are first in covering important events. For really good journalism on these events, see Robert Fisk's account.
The western world's most feared government is shaking with insurrection in the streets after a contested election and the leading name in news, CNN, is shockingly absent from the story. Twitter, meanwhile, is how Iranians are communicating with the outside world. It's the best place to follow events going on in that country and CNN's failure to engage with the story is one of the hottest topics of conversation there.
Hours after Iranian police began clashing with tens of thousands of people in the street, the top story on CNN.com remains peoples' confusion about the switch from analog TV signals.
One quip we've seen is that "Tienanmen + Twitter = Tehran." Twenty years ago this month, CNN brought live news about the Tienanmen Square uprising to the world. It's really strange that the network is absent from this story. CNN anchor and mega-Tweeter Rick Sanchez defensively Tweeted hours ago that he covered Iran throughout the afternoon on TV, so perhaps it's just the CNN.com web team that's incurring the wrath of news consumers. CNN's official Twitter account has been silent for four hours.
Update: See Tom's Tech Blog on Sunday morning for a well written critique of our coverage of these events. By Sunday morning the conflict in Iran was the top story on CNN.com, though, so the extenuating circumstances that blog post brings up don't seem to explain what took so long in the heat of the action.
Political blog aggregator Memeorandum is all Iran right now and is a great place to get in-depth information. The BBC is covering the story well, we found this video posted to YouTube. It's being passed around Twitter. These photos on Flickr are good, too. This video from LiveLeak is quite moving, if likely to cause motion-sickness. Twitter search engine Twazzup has created a great aggregator page for real-time multi-media updates from and about Iran. Andrew Sullivan writes well about the extensive use of Twitter by Iranians in the uprising. There's a collection of Twitter accounts and other media from Iranians over at Reddit. This in a country where the government recently debated applying the death penalty for subversive blogging.
Barack Obama has a good excuse for not engaging substantially with the protests in the streets - if he condemns the incumbent's claim of victory then negotiations around nuclear weapons will be much more difficult. What's CNN's excuse?
Twenty years ago CNN's coverage of Tienanmen Square made its reputation. If in twenty more years it has become consensus that real-time, online, crowdsourced media is the best place to keep up with current events, this incident could be an important part of that history unfolding.
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I stopped going to CNN.com for news a few years back, and they stopped doing news long before then. News wants to be free, twitter helps make it free (free as in speech, not free as in beer).
Good analysis of the failure of CNN and the power of Twitter as the people-powered window onto live events.
And they wonder why MSM is going out of business... wake up... This is real journalism smacking you in the face and you do nothing.
The only time I get news from an old media is when I'm referred to it by the crowdsourced media. (And then the referral is often not about the news, but about old media's irrelevance.)
http://twitter.com/jomhuriyeiran
great post. You've hit the nail on the head. They did a great job on the directory, but distribution is (and always is) worrysome..
very nice. I love the blogs .
The Associated Press also has a video up on YouTube. Fascinating to watch this unfold in micro.
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....
Government blocked youtube,facebook,twitter,...(again!)
Text messaging services are not available since wendsday,even last night mobile networks were dead & calling with cellphones was impossible for hours
haha . .unfair election .I think money would be the powerfull to do election.
Finally, a reliable source of information that doesn't require fact checking: Twitter.
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.
It makes you realize: the truest testament to the power, reach and affect of these new emerging channels - SMS/MMS, blogging, Twitter, FaceBook - is the automatic inclination of authoritarian regimes like Iran and China to shut them down during "sensitive" public events, like national elections and massacre anniversaries.
IMO, Obama does not have an excuse to not engage with the protesters. They are fighting for true democracy, for real freedom of speech. By ignoring them he is handing yet another victory to Ahmenidijad, and he is betraying the values of his country. This is a time to stop being "diplomatic" for a few minutes (i.e. to stop tip-toeing around Ahmenidijad).
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.
Now this makes it evident that if a media engages in a new distribution channel (Twitter in this case), it really has to keep up with the commitment, otherwise the overall perceived quality of news deteriorates. They definitely need a stronger integration across their networks and services. E.g. something goes live on TV – it gets mirrored directly on the web and in the major distribution channels (Twitter, RSS, Facebook, etc.) It's interesting how it's not anymore about the internet itself, but the channels you choose.
I see you, too, bought the silly #CNNfail meme concocted on Twitter.
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.
This is exactly what CNN wouldn't have done years ago. It just shows how far they have fallen. Great post!
Obama has no excuse for being silent about a country whose people want democracy. There is no excuse.
And YOU ARE SURPRISED that CNN(The Clinton News Network) is NOT covering NEWS.....???? I'm have become convince that the U.S. Government has succeeded in CLONING Barack Obama and has those clones working BEHIND the SCENES at CNN to MAKE SURE THAT NOTHING FACTUAL OR ENLIGHTENING gets broadcast....except maybe the movie "EYES WIDE SHUT". Crap is still CRAP and CNN has a a monopoly on CRAP...!!!
@16 I was on Twitter while CNN was failing. That wasn't a mere meme. When a NEWS NETWORK as large as CNN fails to cover something as historical and ground-breaking as what's going on in Iran, then 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.
WAKE UP you stupid Liberals....Otherwise, you may soon be living in a Nagasaki like neighborhood here in the good ole USA after the "Divine" Obama gets through "TALKING" with ALL the rogue dicatators & thugs around the world that SEEM TO LIKE HIM SO MUCH.....!!! Our PROMBLEM here in the USA is not the ECONOMY, INTEREST RATES, FORECLOSURES, INFLATION....IT'S STUPID LIBERALS...!!!The Barney Franks, Chris Dodds who PRETEND to be for the people WHILE THEY LINE THEIR POCKETS AND BLAME EVERYONE ELSE FOR THEIR CREATIONS....!!! WAKE UP...!!!
CNN isn't a news channel, it's an entertainment channel.
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.
Twenty years ago this month, CNN brought live news about the Tienanmen Square uprising to the world. It's really strange that the network is absent from this story.
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.
The Establishment Media and especially the US cable so-called "news" channels are going the same route that Chrysler and GM did. Similarly they don't recognise yet that their shoddy performance and product is being recognised for what it is and is being displaced. I would like to see them continue doing just what they're doing and eventually disappear due to their own irrelevance and dishonesty.
and how much of the twit is true, how much is hype by the opposition?
I am sorry, but to say that twitter is replacing news organizations is like saying Fox News is fair and balanced. Iran has an Internet adoption rate of somewhere in the 30%s, mostly in Tehran. as much as i dislike the current and likely future government of iran there seems to have been a large number of iranians who voted for the current government ... and unless inconsistencies in the election are proven i think people will have to accept the outcome. and if the results are true, all you would get from twitter is a one sided view of what is going on in iran.
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.
By the way, I think it should be noted that the international version of CNN's homepage (edition.cnn.com) is quite different from the US version of CNN's homepage (cnn.com). Presently, the former highlights much more ocverage about the riots than the latter.
I imagine CNN International has been rolling with the story throughout. But most people don't see CNNI in the US. :(
Also btw, latest CNN article notes that "the government reportedly shut down access to networking sites, such as Twitter, making it difficult for information to seep out to the outside world." How much on-the-ground news are we actually getting from Iran via Twitter?
Google is main powerfull searching engine in the world and i don't think they will loss many of visitors.
Google is main powerfull searching don't think they will loss
Google is main powerfull searching engine in the world and i don't think they will loss many of visitors.
Really? It's "strange" to you that CNN is injecting ideology and politics into their coverage of a story? You find it strange that, since the candidate that our current president favors is being protested in the streets that CNN won't cover it? Really?
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.
One thing the USA could learn from the elections in Iran is the speed they count ballots and report the results. We still don't have a elected senator in the state of MN yet. We are suppose to be the most advanced country, guess Iran may be beating us. Of course, our elections are always fair too and every ballot gets counted, at least we are told that.
CNN is the "leading name is news?" Dude, this isn't 1985 anymore.
Toni, if you believe this #CNNfail isn't a meme, could you please site your source of direct, independent news out of Teheran on Twitter?
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.
demorcrcy my buns does not matter who won as long as the Clergy run the country 8instead of the people their is no democracy.The President in Iran is a figure head.I think the people of Iran are now just finding out that the clergy controll9ng the country doesn't matter who was elected they have no fre3edom.I am sure it was the religious clergy that shut everything down.Stop and think who really control most of those countries ,Just like the Taliban it is the religious clergy that are doing this
>One thing the USA could learn from the elections in Iran is the speed they count ballots and report the results
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.
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'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
The western world's most feared government...
Iran ?
Wrong : Israel first, then USA and North Korea, then Iran.
This article is garbage. CNN has run many stories on the situation in Iran, devoting long blocks of time to it today. Iran is not the only story in news right now, and CNN must provide perspective, which is something that the people who twitter do not have. People who twitter think they are at the center of the universe.
this is total crap.
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
Seriously! Unlike Twitter which is nothing more than the unverified rantings of anonymous strangers, REAL news outlets like CNN take time and care when constructing their stories. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of tweets dealing with Iran aren't being written by Iranians on the street, rather by foreigners looking in and offering their opinions on the issue. Stupid article and stupid theory. The idea of Twitter as a news source is not only ridiculous, but dangerous and scary.
I am shocked that Bark Obama is not showing his sincerer feeling about humanity.
MR. PRESIDENT ": WAKE UP "
This is just a lazy rant from someone who doesn't understand that he's looking at the US edition of CNN and CNN International has been covering this story from the beginning. It's bad enough to make the mistake in the first place, but quite a few people have politely pointed it out in the comments. Despite this, I can see from Marshall Kirkpatrick's latest update to the story, he STILL does not get it.
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.
Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter for News About Iran http://bit.ly/zN4ly [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/2163009359]
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
|
June 14, 2009 11:10 PM
the internet seems to be leveling the playing field worldwide... i can dig it
Hello
Since when are the rumblings of teenagers or 20-somethings considered serious news source?
CNN has changed the last few years since it was sold and not always for the better. The middle east is a mess right now, they have poor leaders who do what ever it takes to stay in power. Israel is another big problem that must be fixed but there are people on both sides that think the solution is worse than the status quo. Unless the problems in Israel are fixed in the next 10years, I don't think it will be around in 25years. Once the muslim world finds a strong leader to rally behind then Israel will be in trouble but I don't see that happening for many years. History shows that the muslims can work together but only when a true leader is at it head.
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