Thursday, February 26, 2009

For fast breaking news, tune in to --Twitter?

Yet another piece of evidence that traditional media is getting some competition from the more "non-traditional" media.

Twitter first to publish dramatic crash pictures

(CNN) -- The social networking site Twitter again stole a march on traditional media when it was the first outlet to publish dramatic pictures of the Turkish Airlines crash.

Moments after the plane crashed at Amsterdam's Schipol airport on Wednesday morning the news was appearing on Twitter, CNN International correspondent Errol Barnett said.

"This is a story that broke on Twitter first and continued to unfold from there. Eyewitnesses were posting comments about the shock of seeing the plane 'dive' and amazement of passengers walking out of the wreckage," Barnett said.

"It was a dramatic image of a fractured plane posted on Twitter.com that was the first worldwide view of the Turkish Airlines crash."

Barnett said that when CNN saw the image it moved quickly to confirm with Dutch officials that a crash had happened.

"Within minutes we were reporting on the story.

"This proves that social networking sites can be a real asset in covering breaking news and gathering eyewitness accounts but the web should always be treated with extreme caution," Barnett said.

"We make a concerted effort to reach out to people posting on the Internet to verify what they say matches up with official accounts."

HT: Journalism.org

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