Early this morning the news broke that a meteor had streaked across the sky near Chelyabinsk, Russia and within minutes it was trending and video footage posted on YouTube (see below) went viral. People immediately followed the reports as fresh updates came in over Twitter and the social websites quickly took hold and posted up articles.
However behind the scenes there were a lot of comments being made over Twitter about the fact that the big news networks weren’t picking up the story at all. CNN, NBC, Fox News were all silent and 2 hours after the story broke CNN’s own ‘breaking news’ Twitter account posted a rather poor and misinformed bulletin:
@cnnbrk Meteor blast injures four in southern Russia #cnn
Two hours previously it was already confirmed over the local Russian newswires that over 100 people had been injured by the blast wave of the passing meteor as it blew out windows.
So as social media tightens it’s grip as a channel for real-time news and information updates is there really a place for large, cumbersome and frankly, biased networks anymore ? What information do they really provide that we can’t get at our fingertips elsewhere ? What does it mean for business when the news isn’t the latest source?
Is it high time for one more asteroid strike to take out another set of dinosaurs ?
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BBC’s late report:
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Chris Brogan
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Radar O'Reilly
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SocialMedia Today
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Lifehacker
Reblogged this on zbigniewsieraj.
There’s a fascinating story behind what happened. Maybe the news media’s role is not to break the news anymore…they don’t the mechanisms in place nor the incentives to tell what’s happening right now. Newspapers always told us yesterday’s news, and online newspapers, it would appear, tell us what happened a few hours ago.
If we want to know what’s happening…that will take new sources with new filters. That’s the appeal of Twitter and Facebook.