To: Iran

To: Iran

You have the support of the Free World. We are now approaching the sixtieth anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, when the international community stood up against the forces of oppression. And we did so again in 1963 when the Soviets erected the Berlin Wall in an attempt to imprison their own population, and Kennedy famously came to the city of West Berlin and declared "Ich bin ein Berliner." Now we are all Iranians. Freedom knows no master.

From: Tristan Coolen, democrat

p.s. Be sure to check out the title link at the top, it's pretty good. Also, here's a link to the Time magazine if you want to check out what's inside.

In Defense of CNN

There's been a lot of talk about the failures of CNN and the mainstream media to cover the Iranian elections. I touched on this in my last blog entry, but I wanted to expand on it.

Principally the complaints are two-parted: That coverage is wholly insufficient and then that what little coverage there is seems to be hesitant to stray from the Iranian government line. Mainstream media journalists are seemingly ignoring the tidal wave of information pouring forth out of the social media networks, and instead merely saying that "President Ahmadinejad retained his position according to the official election process with 65 percent of the vote. Ayatollah Khomeini released a statement Monday inviting Mousavi and his supporters to identify ballot areas that they would like to be recounted."

Meanwhile frantic Iranian Twitterers are reporting millions of marchers and blood in the streets.

In defense of CNN, I think some might be getting a little confused by the way journalists write. "Official reports" mean that they are the reports that are coming from government officials, not that they are objectively true. The editing process is a lot more stringent than people think, but part of that means that things have to be written in a certain way or it takes inches and inches to explain.

Professional journalists try to limit themselves to attributable statements and provable facts, and that's why they are having a tough time writing about a movement that is heavily based on rumor and anonymous Internet users.

As a joe-blow citizen, I can write: "That hick Ahmadinejad rigged the election and now his goons are killing peaceful demonstrators. It's an affront to democracy everywhere and the entire world should damn him and Khomeini for it." But if I'm working as a journalist then I can't say any of that because I have no proof or attributable sources and I need to avoid editorializing.

The journalistic industry as a whole is totally averse to printing anything that is unsubstantiated, and if you want to print a quote from an anonymous source (or often just somebody's first name) then you usually have to get all sorts of people to sign off on you doing it. And for good reason. It isn't good enough to simply say, "Here's what someone might have said, we have no proof that it is at all true and we can't say who said it," because that's a just a quick trip to fictitious stories and libel suits.

That doesn't excuse mainstream media for letting stupid shit sit on their front pages and interviewing the Jonas brothers while people are dying in the streets, but you have to recognize the position they are in - either they have to find a way to report on hearsay or they have to play the same stuff over and over.

Journalists shouldn't remain mute if they know of a good story in the making, but there's a need to hold their enthusiasm somewhat. Let Twitter and YouTube have the glory of the 24-hour live coverage, and focus on getting it right. Hell, baseless journalism from overexcited journalists making assumptions is what helped get us into Iraq.

Twittering the Iran Election

I've been spending much of the last day or so online watching the Iran election and Twittering about it. My previous resistance to using Twitter seems to have dissipated, especially because I found a gadget that allowed me to put it onto my iGoogle homepage as well as automatically update it to my Facebook and Blog. Very easy to use on a whim, and it goes out to a wide range of people.

The Iranian elections have been carried almost entirely online, with mainstream media sources being limited by both logistics as well as Iranian government authorities prohibiting coverage. Instead of my television, people have been using Web proxies to use online services like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and more.

It's interesting to see how each event like this seems to have these social media sources rapidly outpacing the mainstream news. Part of this is because of the limitations upon journalists to avoid publishing hearsay, but CNN and the BBC seem to be falling further behind each time.

This is particularly true for events that affect broad range of people and have significant duration. Previous examples are the attacks in Mumbai, or even the original RNC convention that put Twitter on the map. At this point the mainstream media is putting out information that is hours out of date and is therefore pretty worthless. The signal to noise ratio is definitely lower, but the sheer amount of output and self-correction is making for some incredible coverage.

For example, Iranian students like this one have been providing live coverage during brutal attacks upon the student dorms by Iranian Hezbollah. A very different, visceral kind of journalism.

Additionally, major blogs and news agencies are beginning to really incorporate this kind of social media into their reporting. Places like the Huffington Post are following trending topics like #IranElection in order to collate good information and collective it, while larger news agencies such as CNN International are contacting popular Twitter users in order to gather first-person sources.

It's a changing world. Of course, there's no money in it either.