CNN Spreads Latest Breitbart Smear focused on what we knew about the stalking and set up of Congressman Weiner. That this was another ACORN like ‘sting’ is readily apparent via even a cursory inspection.
CNN has disingenuously ‘covered’ the story, which is to say they smeared right wing bullshit all over Congressman Weiner, probably motivated by a combination of the beating the GOP took in New York 26 and Weiner’s unflinching handling of the crimes of Clarence Thomas.
How do we know they were complicit? Simple, they’re running Crimson Hexagon – there is no plausible way they could not have known it was a setup.
How funny will it be, on a scale of one to ten, if it turns out that one of the people who engineered Weinergate is a Big Government contributor? I won't say more until we dig further, but if this new line of investigation proves out I don't see how Breitbart's operation will survive. (22:21 CST Wednesday 6/1/2011)
This was the state of CNN's handling of social media seventeen months ago ...
At a time when media organizations big and small are debating how best to integrate sites like Twitter and Facebook into their coverage, CNN appears to have found a successful application.
"We turned the corner tonight," Alex Wellen, CNN's Senior Executive Producer, Integrated Programming said in the control room shortly after King demonstrated the technology for the first time.
Wellen said that CNN had access to the entire "firehose" of Twitter data, as opposed to the limited amounts Twitter makes publicly available for search, and said that there were three elements that made the analysis successful: 1. massive amounts of data, 2. timing of that data, and 3. state-by-state geotagging of that data.
First, CNN has the firehose – every single tweet that is made ends up in systems they own. They have a massive investment here.
CNN is running Crimson Hexagon – advanced analytics for social media.
Crimson Hexagon’s advanced technology can identify and analyze opinion from large quantities of text, whether it’s the vast blogosphere or even an in-house content repository. Crimson Hexagon users access a private, customized dashboard that starts by showing the volume of mentions and positive/negative sentiment on topics of your choosing, across the internet and social media sources. Then with the Crimson Hexagon Opinion Analysis Platform, consumer brands, marketing agencies, media firms and government agencies can drill deeper into relevant opinion according to their specific concerns, letting them quickly find answers to key marketing and business questions.
So they’ve got a massive investment in hardware, which would be a requirement to handle the full throttle output from Twitter, and they’ve got the best of breed system for analyzing it, and presumably they know at least as much as GovSM about which accounts are actually politicians and who is talking to them.
And they still couldn’t do what I did in less than an hour using FollowerWonk to find the conspirators and CutePDF to save timelines I knew would be scrubbed as soon as I shined a light on them.
There are two explanations here.
CNN is utterly and completely incompetent, less capable than one blogger with a ratty laptop and two free tools, despite having a massive investment in social media monitoring.
CNN figures @RandiKayeCNN and @DanaBashCNN were fully aware of Breitbart’s smear and their ‘coverage’ was CNN corporate attempting to intimidate Congressman Weiner.
Weiner can’t do it himself, but the rest of the House Democrats need to step up with a hearing on this matter. Our media is just as corrupt as Wall Street, they’re failing in their role as the fourth estate, and Congress must hold them accountable.
Multiple instances of attempted spin against Weiner are seen below. I don't recognize the commentors and I'll guess we have a few sleeper wingnuts among our ranks. Please look and if I'm right feel free to force feed them some donuts.
OK, strike that, some Kossacks I don't know have popped up in this diary. I HR one thinking dealing with trolls, then people I do know say "Hey, stop that!". I will leave the donut so people can see what happened, sorry for being trigger happy.
Kossack middleagedhousewife suggests we all kick the crap out of CNN on their comment form. If you're feeling really inspired please post what you're sending them in a comment :-)
More faux controversy and scandal. Who is this Russert asswipe, anyway? I literally don't have cable TV service so I wouldn't recognize him if I saw him. Executive summary - Weiner says something clumsy, but clear with the full quote, and shitty media clips out just the bit that makes it sound really bad. What a bunch of wankers ...
AW: I didn't send that picture out.
Russert: That's not a picture of you?
AW: You know I can't say with certitude: my system was hacked, pictures can be manipulated; pictures can be dropped in and inserted; one of the reasons that I've asked a firm that includes an internet security arm is to take a look at what the heck happened here, just to make sure that ...[video ends abruptly here]
