As most of the dKos readers know, we have seen an absolutely stunning confluence of events in this weekend's Iranian presidential elections and the aftermath which followed. Record numbers of Iranian citizens voted in this election. So when it was reported on Iran state television that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the election with a seemingly improbable 65% of the vote, it took the Iranian people by surprise. Many of then got outraged, claiming that the election was stolen or rigged, and demonstrators in the hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Iran in massive protests. Elements of Iran's Revolutionary Guard often reacted to the people's protests in violent fashion, beating down demonstrators, shooting tear gas into crowds, and detaining supporters of Mir Mousavi as well as a number of foreign journalists. Much of this activity was documented bravely by Iranian citizens on social networking sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr, and dKos, The Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, Andrew Sullivan, and other members of the blogosphere were giving real-time updates on activity on the ground. This was by far the leading international news story of the past weekend, but when one turned to CNN to get updates on the events in Iran, all one got was this:
(crickets)
Well, technically not crickets. But for the cable news network which earned its credibility for its real-time coverage of the original Iraq war, the Tiannemen Square massacre, the war in Bosnia, and the fall of the Soviet Union, its lack of coverage of this historic event was a disappointment of massive proportions.
While people were getting live updates of the events on the ground in Iran via Twitter and blogs on Friday night and all day Saturday, CNN viewers were watching reruns of Campbell Brown, Larry King, and other programs, and the main story on CNN.com was the bankruptcy filing by Six Flags. Fox News and MSNBC were no better; in fact, Fox News continued their Saturday programming with their Obama-bashing talking heads while MSNBC showed their usual prison and true crime documentaries. This was not lost on the Twitter universe; people managed to pull themselves away from the compelling tweets from Iran long enough to start their own thread called #CNNFail. Most of the tweets bashed CNN and the other news networks' lack of coverage of the Iranian election crisis, with one tweet even derisively telling CNN to get their live news updates from Twitter. CNN apparently got sick of getting nasty emails and tweets, and by Sunday afternoon they devoted quite a bit of air time to the unfolding events in Iran, even surprisingly attempting to defend their news coverage.
The massive protests in the streets of Iran obviously took the ruling clerics of the country by surprise. The reaction of the social networks must have taken the mainstream media equally by surprise as well. CNN and the other networks were scrambling to save face by Sunday, and they even took shots at the social networks and blogs for their lack of journalistic standards. While it's obviously important to have thorough standards for posting news stories on air, particularly in a situation as chaotic and fluid as Iran, it was no reason to completely drop the ball on news coverage as they did on Saturday. The social network sites and blogosphere were there to give real-time updates; it was the role of the mainstream media to back up the reports, edit them as best as they could, and give context to the events on the ground. This was something CNN apparently did not get until Sunday.
While a large percentage of people are getting their news off the web and YouTube, the mainstream media should be aware that they still have an important role in the dissemination of news, and that instead of looking at new media as competitors, they should see it as a symbiotic relationship. This was the reason for much of the anger on Twitter and the social networking sites, who still see the mainstream media as a valuable asset, even if they sometimes get their information elsewhere. Instead of treating the blogosphere and social media as the enemy, they should use it as a partnership to complement their own coverage. Otherwise, they may end up heading in the same direction as the newspaper business.