The most obvious example is the Iranian election. This story was made by the new media. It is not the first such occurrence, but it is one of the most important and probably the largest. Coverage for at least the first 48 or so hours seemed to be only on the Internet. Andrew Sullivan and The Huffington Post both had excellent coverage, as did the New York Times' news blog, The Lede.
All did a very effective job at summing up all the information coming out of Iran, which was mostly conveyed over social networks with Twitter leading the way. Not many people have the time and patience to sort through all the tweets from various Iranians. This is even more true when the Iranian government took the dissemination of misinformation to a new level and made their own Twitter accounts. A regular person will not sit there and try to figure out which information is true and which is planted. This is where the blogs stepped in. The blogs effectively did the jobs that CNN or MSNBC or Fox were supposed to be doing. They took the raw news data and made sense of it for the masses.
The masses also had access to the raw news data, if they were wanted it. This is what I think was one of the most interesting aspects to come out of the events. I wasn't on Twitter when the attacks on India occurred last year, so this was my first time experiencing something like this. It was gripping, to say the least, to see a wave of new tweets come in. I knew that I was among the first people to hear about certain developments and I knew that some tweets were almost real time. Twitter provides a level of connection across the world that is unprecedented. It also allows for each person to form an opinion on current events, instead of being told what to think. Extremely important leap forward.
Another interesting aspect is the cyber warfare that was going on. The Iranian government soon found out about the information getting out of the country and did what every good authoritarian regime does and attempted to shut down communication. Phone lines, cell phones, and the Internet all had limited access. When people outside of Iran provided the people of Iran proxies so they still had Internet access, they would shut down the proxies. Of course, more and more proxies popped up. When the government started to shut down Iranian reformist websites, pleas went out over Twitter to attack the government electronically. DoS attacks were launched on a variety of government and pro-government sites.
So Twitter gives us raw data, it keeps people connected to organize and it allows for people across the globe to participate in historic events. This is absolutely incredible. What if Twitter was around for the 2000/2004 stolen elections? Or the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago? Or Tiananmen Square? Countless examples.
Meanwhile, blogs and online news sites with little, if any, traditional resources outdid cable news and newspapers. Newspapers are dying, their staff and resources have been cut, so it's of little surprise that they were outdone. But cable news, with all their profit and fancy graphics and huge amounts of resources, ultimately failed.
This is why the continuing ascension of new media is imperative. With the steady demise of newspapers, there needs to be another form of news dissemination. Otherwise, even more people will get their news from local and cable news.
The problem with that, of course, is that cable news sucks. This was done to death, so I've just picked out a few examples to show what was happening on these stations.
During the weekend, when the #cnnfail hashtag was at its height:
CNN was showing a repeat of Larry King’s interview of the stars of the “American Chopper” show.
On the morning of Monday June 15th:
"...I turned on cable news this morning, and saw endless ads for a Larry King Jonas Brothers "interview," Morning Joe yuking it up discussing Kuwaiti massage therapists, a video of a tomato throwing contest on CNN...
Middle of the day on the 15th while there are huge protests and crackdowns, about CNN:
...you hear a simple statement from the anchor that Mousavi lost the election and telling us to wait for the official results in 10 day's time...
Infinite examples are out there, no need for me to put any more. Basically, massive news fail. Eventually the networks grudgingly started some half-assed coverage of Iran. I'm sure the execs and shareholders were waiting for some other news story...
And I'm sure they're very happy that four very-famous to why-is-he-famous people died. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and Billy Mays all died within several days of one another. This gave cable the excuse to stop with all that boring Iran stuff and cover something really worthwhile. Even then, they all got scooped on the Michael Jackson situation by TMZ.
These deaths allowed cable news the opportunity to again start covering people that look like us (well, except for Michael) and speak our language. No more of those people that look odd and speak some sort of gibberish. I'm not sure on the exact statistics, but ratings went up at least 200% for Fox, CNN and MSNBC.
And we all are, of course, shaped by the culture we grew up in. A culture that has largely been shaped by values and goals largely seen as being "American." Something the MSM has helped to push ever since they switched from being a news center to being a profit center. So, it was inevitable, but no less sickening, that as the news of Michael Jackson's hospitalization and subsequent death spread, it took over Twitter also.
#Iran and #iranelection had been at the top of Twitter's Trending Topics (TTT) for almost two weeks and all of a sudden they were completely off the list. Full of Michael Jackson, MJ, RIP MJ and various song and album titles. I remember a couple of Iranian tweeters, having finally awoken, posting what was essentially a "WTF" reaction.
So both mediums have the weakness of being taken over by what is more "popular" news. The huge difference is that MSM tells you what is popular and Twitter is driven solely by it's users. Ultimately, we control what is most popular. As the grip on news by the MSM is weakened, perhaps the sensationalist/celebrity "news" will grow a bit stale.
Another example of the possible power that the online community now has could perhaps be seen in the performance of the United States Men's National Team (USMNT) in FIFA's Confederations Cup. Football, as it will be called in this blog, is not very popular in these United States, as the MSM is quick to point out whenever it gets the chance. It will never ever catch on, it's boring, there's no scoring, blah blah blah. This is what the MSM has been telling us as far back as I can remember.
Quick history lesson. In the 1950 World Cup, we beat England. Then fell of the face of the football globe for 40 years until we finally qualified for the Cup again in 1990. Since then, the program has made great strides. The US qualified for four more World Cups (with a fifth imminent); they beat number one ranked Brazil in the 1998 Gold Cup; they made an improbable run to the quarterfinals in the 2002 World Cup, beating Portugal and Mexico before falling to Germany 1-0.
Then, the 2009 Confederations Cup. Having played like utter crap the first two games, I think the team had to be somewhat taken aback with the outrage and criticism coming at them from the Internet. When had the USMNT program ever been under any sort of media pressure? Never. The MSM only writes standard fluff pieces about a match, no sort of analysis or critique. US Soccer had been free to run the program however they saw fit with no questions asked.
Now, blogs and online columnists were ripping the organization and players. Bradley's head was being called for. There was actual pressure on the team to succeed, because guess what, people in the States care about football. So what happened? They responded by thrashing Egypt 3-0 and thanks to a Dossena own goal, Brazil beat Italy to send the US into a match against number one ranked Spain. Which, we all know, they somehow beat 2-0 to get to their first ever FIFA senior level tournament final. A devastating 3-2 loss to Brazil in the final hurt, but it showed how much football as grown.
This is of course merely speculation, but I think it's entirely possible that again the blogs took the place of the MSM. The majority of the team has come of age in the Internet age, so they are wired like most of us under 30. I know of at least four players that have Twitter accounts. It's hard to think you're doing a bad job if no one ever told you. The MSM never told them they were sucking because the MSM never talked about them. Maybe the blogger's comments finally got it into the player's heads that their recent performances were not acceptable. Bradley even seemed like he knew what he was doing for a bit.
In direct contrast to the coverage of Iran comes the coverage of the Honduran coup. As you might say, what coverage? Whereas the new media excelled in picking up the ball dropped by the MSM in Iran, it has not done so in Honduras. A democratic government has been ousted by the military, people are protesting in the streets. At the very least, a bit similar to the Iran situation. The Huffington Post and Andrew Sullivan have a few posts, but it seems that The Lede has none. Why is this?
I believe the difference is that Iran's young people are an extremely wired bunch. I saw somewhere that Iran had the third most bloggers in the world. They had readily available Internet access, to tweet, blog, Facebook, whatever. I imagine Honduras is not quite the same. We were being told what was happening in Iran as it happened, the people let us know. It has not been the same for Honduras, unfortunately.
Where the new media excels in using it's limited resources and collecting raw data it fails when there is little to no raw data. At this point, it's up to the MSM with their wealth and overseas correspondents to get the story and present it to us. But of course, they won't, because dead celebrities are more important.
So, what to think of all of this? Unfortunately, cable news is still how most Americans get their news. They dictate what news people see and hear about. And because they care about ratings and profit margins, more often than not, the stories are crap.
As an alternative to cable, most people used to go to the newspapers. But, the traditional, national, powerhouse papers are dying. They will never again be able to compete like they're used to. Papers might have to become more localized and get their national and international news only from wire services, instead of having correspondents all over the globe.
As the newspapers fail, the new media needs to become that alternative to cable. Twitter and bloggers have proved how important and how effective they can be. However, they have also shown they are still prone to crap news stories. They don't have resources to pick up news from countries that aren't that well wired. New media is still in it's infancy though and something will happen to make up for these faults and others.
Of utmost importance is that news is becoming a two-way street. Instead of us being told what is happening and what to think about it, or even being told what to care about, we have shown that we can ingest news straight from the source and form our own opinions. We can now tell the MSM what is important and what we want covered.
Cable's dominance will probably not end anytime soon, but I believe as the generations growing up in the Internet age begin to grow older, cable news' influence will fall. No one thought a 24 hour news network would work, but CNN started the slow death of the newspapers. Just the same, new media has its detractors. As the population turnover continues, TV in it's current form will eventually seem as obsolete as newspapers do now. New media still has a ways to go. The gap between the MSM and new media is still great. Asked a few weeks ago, I would've said the gap was next to insurmountable. Then, the new media stepped up and proved it's worth. I can now envision a end to the MSM as we see it.
