If you were reading the Dish this weekend you were living in a different universe from someone watching Fox or MSNBC. There is very little difference between no information and misinformation. That is what the American people are getting – a starvation diet of no news and lots of empty carbs. Fatty, salty food with no nutritional value. And we're too damn apathetic to demand better. There is a great divide in the decisions we make as an informed populace vs the decisions we make as an uninformed or misinformed one. The people I know who rely on the MSM for their news consistently know less about what actually happened than my blogger friends do, and have less nuanced opinions about these events. That's a damn shame if you ask me. It leads to the support of bad policy.
As Marc Ambinder explains it on The Atlantic website, "we've got reliable Humint." A plethora of first hand accounts is making it possible to truly get an accurate picture of what is going on in a crisis (in addition to the fact that it can stymie the effects of media blackout) and we are able to get this picture without turning our boob tubes on.
The people of the world are able to have a "real-time, unfiltered experience of what's happening from the people who are, themselves, experiencing it." They are able to feel a euphoric reaction in their mind, a euphoric reaction which consequentially leads to the humanization of a people a majority of Americans were once in favor of bombing.
The new media that includes Twitter has produced a synergy where others are working with Iranians to spread information and wage campaigns from the outside that they would like to see waged. Two campaigns have already been waged successfully.
Yesterday, at 5 pm ET, when sites liveblogging the demonstrations and violence in Iran noticed Twitter was planning maintenance for 9:45 PT, a campaign began that involved the inclusion of #TwitterStayUp and #NoMaintenance tags.
After a couple hours, the campaign was a success and Twitter rescheduled its maintenance for 2:30 PT (1:30 am ET in Iran).
Perhaps, somebody in the Obama Administration noticed the trending topic on Twitter because on Tuesday it was reported that Obama's State Department intervened so that Iranians could use this communications tool throughout the day on Tuesday when they would be demonstrating.
The other campaign took place over the weekend as millions tweeted #CNNFail in response to the lack of coverage of Iran on CNN.
On the "#CNNFail Uprising":
As the Iranian election aftermath unfolded in Tehran--thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to express their anger at perceived electoral irregularities--an unexpected hashtag began to explode through the Twitterverse: "CNNFail."
Even as Twitter became the best source for rapid-fire news developments from the front lines of the riots in Tehran, a growing number of users of the microblogging service were incredulous at the near total lack of coverage of the story on CNN, a network that cut its teeth with on-the-spot reporting from the Middle East...
...CNN just loops the same stories endlessly, while ignoring the biggest story," posted Twitter user MediaButcher.
"CNN needs to talk about the important things like Ms. California and who Paris Hilton is (sleeping with)," wrote Twitter user ArchivalQuality."
It's ironic that CNN bore the brunt of the MSM backlash that was waged in the Twitterverse. CNN is the only news organization I know of that regularly reads Twitter messages during its newscasts.
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