Over at Hot Air, some righty troll has posted the news that I was 100% correct in my assessment of Robert Gibbs’ comments on Iran yesterday. Your plate of crow awaits, Mr. Pundit.
I wrote a little love letter, yesterday, to the old media types who are telling Twitter to get off their lawns. Today, Jake Tapper has a post about a bump in the road for Iranian election tweeters that’s sure to make the dinosaurs shout “A-HA!”
ABC’s Chief Foreign Correspondent Jim Sciutto has just left Iran. His visa, which allowed him to report from the streets of Tehran during the election demonstrations, has expired, requiring him to depart. He reports now from Dubai:
The government is now trying to turn technology against the protesters. Officials have started a number of fake opposition pages on Twitter, which are tweeting propaganda and misleading information. I became an unwitting victim when a user named ‘persian_guy’ retweeted several things under my name which I didn’t write. Here are a couple:
As I said yesterday, this is no reason to throw out the only tool available to the Iranian opposition. It’s like saying, “I got a phone call from someone pretending to be X, and they stole my identity! No more phone calls for me! That dang thing’ll steal your soul, anyway!”
The fake re-tweets, in this case, were rather clumsy, and were sure to raise the suspicion of anyone with an ounce of intelligence.
The Iranian opposition has shown outstanding resourcefulness and tenacity. I doubt very much that they’ll be foiled by the Twitter equivalent of the Jerky Boys.
Update: Andrew Sullivan somehow agrees with both of us.
I was probably one of many journalists who sat up and took notice of Twitter’s amazing role in the Iranian election aftermath. Of course, you can’t give anyone credit for anything without some naysayer coming along to say “Nay,” and Slate’s Jack Shafer fills the “beat the backlash” opening in this case:
Doubting Twitter: Let’s not get carried away about its role in Iran’s demonstrations.
OK, before I get started, let me re-print my own Twitter in Iran article at the end of this one, so you can see who’s getting carried where. This will save me some time, anyway. Continue: Continue reading
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release June 15, 2009
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT OBAMA
AND PRIME MINISTER BERLUSCONI OF ITALY
IN PRESS AVAILABILITY
Oval Office
5:48 P.M. EDT
Continue reading
Update: Score a big victory for Tweeps everywhere, who have succeeded in getting Twitter to delay maintenance that would have shut down communication out of Iran for at least an hour.
Almost 2 years ago, political innovator Joe Trippi tried to explain to me what the hell Twitter was, and why it was going to be “the new MySpace.” Although I had no frakkin’ idea what he was talking about, I signed up anyway. The guy never steered me wrong before.
Almost a year after that, I began to see the possibilities, and now, I routinely sign off of Twitter with a mock prayer in memory of MySpace. Twitter as a viral watercooler (that sounds gross) has, indeed, revolutionized social media with the unlikely combination of old-school elements like the telegraph and the party line.
Now, it looks like Twitter has revolutionized journalism. Continue reading