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When a bank robbery occurred in our town recently, I didn't hear about it first on the local television news or in the newspaper. Those places carried the story long after it had been discussed to death on the local listserv. When the Discovery building hostage situation occurred last Tuesday, it wasn't CNN or NBC providing me with up-to-the-moment information. It was Twitter.
I'm not the only one who has noticed how much more immediate and accessible the news has become with the addition of citizen-journalist-helpers. I hesitate to call them citizen-journalists because they're often not providing in-depth information or commentary. But they are providing the photos snapped with their cell phones and uploaded immediately to the Web. They're passing along snatches of important points that -- when strung together -- paint a more human, emotional version of the story than provided by traditional media outlets.
At the same time, I watched a fight erupt on Twitter over who was featured in the now-famous photo: was it the gunman? A police officer? One of the S.W.A.T. team members? And these fights remind you that citizen-journalist-helpers are not held to the same standards of traditional media journalists. Anyone can throw up a pictures on the Web and declare it fact, and while mistakes do occur in traditional outlets (just peruse the daily retractions in any publication), there is at least a system of checks and balances that attempt to keep to the facts.
Which is not the case on Twitter.
What is the general public to do -- we now know how quickly we can disseminate information, and it's hard to go back to the slow movement of information trickling out via traditional media outlets. And at the same time, we also know how inaccurate this quick information may be.
As the Washington Post article points out, there is another side of information being disseminated by Twitter that is usually missed completely by the mainstream media; the emotional side of the story.
There was poignancy, too, as helpless friends, sympathetic strangers and relatives ("Please pray for my cousin . . . " read one) tweeted their fears and concerns to a communal thread, or hashtag, called #discovery. Others used the thread to signal the all clear: "Thank you everyone for your well wishes," read one, posted around 2 p.m. "@Discovery_News team all safe."
Twitter can provide both the magnitude and the minuscule -- the information needed by all, and the information that is personal and emotional.
It's not that we want one form of information and not the other; I think there is room in this world for both traditional media and citizen-journalist-helpers. In the same way that grandparents and children can exist in the same family, each providing a different way of viewing the world, the wisdom of traditional media can be coupled with the exuberant youth of social media to create an uber-power of information dissemination -- that is, if the two forms don't fight themselves to death before they can work together.
Washington Posts admits,
TV can offer live pictures of an event (and local stations were on the scene quickly on Wednesday), and newspapers can provide context and fact-checking, but for raw speed and real-time eyewitness accounts, it's now virtually impossible for the mainstream media to keep pace with the likes of Twitter.
It may have taken the traditional media world over a half hour to get on the scene and start telling their side of the story, but once they did, the reporting was invaluable. Not just the quality of the language and visuals, but also the immediate trust viewers could have for the information.
It's the difference between holding raw ingredients and holding the well-cooked meal. It's all still food, but presentation is everything. When you're starving, you don't care for things to be properly arranged
