Jun

14

Sunday morning Twitter

June 14, 2009 | by Ray Frager | Categories The Rest | Comments Off

CNN’s Reliable Sources this morning featured a discussion about Twitter and journalism with the network’s Rick Sanchez and CBSSports.com columnist Gregg Doyel. Sanchez makes Twitter an integral part of his daily program; Doyel says Twitter makes us all dumber.

Sanchez said he has learned more about what is going on recently in Iran via Twitter than he has via any traditional media source, including CNN. Doyel, who writes compelling and often-provocative columns for CBSSports, said Twitter is just a lot of “white noise.”

I think part of what Doyel was saying could be extended to the Internet in general — that there is lots of uninformed, stupid junk out there (you know, like the stuff I write).  So, yes, Twitter can descend into “white noise.” However, we don’t all pay attention to everything. So we ignore the tweets from the guy who tells us what he’s eating for lunch, but we click on the link to a well-written piece recommended by someone else whose opinion has proven worthwhile.

What didn’t come up in the discussion, however, was the point about how using Twitter as a source of reporting is fraught with the danger of fraud. That tweet from Tehran? How do we know it’s not really coming from Hoboken? It’s one thing to allow anonymous opinion to flourish but quite another to assume you’re getting the facts on the ground from every mouse click.

(By the way, you add to your white noise by following me on Twitter via @MediumWellGuy.)


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