Is Twitter Stealing CNN's Crown for Delivering Real Time News?

Interestingly enough, CNN was once considered to be the provider of the most instantaneous, real-time news. If something was happening in the world, you could tune into CNN to get the latest details.

Today, that comes from Twitter.

Thursday, as the news of Michael Jackson’s emergency situation and eventually his death unfolded, Twitter was blowing up with Michael Jackson-related tweets, with people asking for, as much as sharing, details about his condition. When the reports started coming in that Jackson had died - first from TMZ, then from the LA Times, CBS News and the Associated Press - those tweets were being re-tweeted and re-tweeted all across Twitter.

CNN, in the meantime, continued to report that Jackson was hospitalized.

I’ll give CNN this much credit: It eventually started informing its viewers about what the other news outlets were reporting, that Jackson had died, though it was waiting for official confirmation before putting up the big headline. That’s responsible journalism and they deserve some credit for that.

Still, as the events unfolded, I couldn’t help but think back on how CNN became the poster child for real-time, on-demand news when it first entered the news scene. And now Twitter, which isn’t even a news outlet, is disrupting that.

Twitter may be filled with gossip and incorrect information as people re-tweet any and all information they happen to find. But you can’t deny that, when it comes to instantaneous news, Twitter allows us to tap into the reporting skills of the masses, not just the professionals who give us the news as it becomes “official.”

Comments

[Mad Hedge F...:]

Twitter survived its first serious crash threat when traffic spiked to 65,000 tweets a second. AT & T’s network did less well, and almost came down. You would think that the copyright holder on the Jackson titles, Sony (SNE), would do well, but not so. Instead Amazon (AMZN) stock took off, offering for sale the top ten selling Jackson CD’s by the King of Pop. I guess it’s a new world out there.

Jun 28 03:39 PM

[Peter Iwano...:]

Simple economic reason for this one. Twitter is more efficient when it comes to finding news than CNN. CNN has to employ journalist, pay them tons of money, and send them where CNN "thinks" big news will happen.

Jun 29 09:32 AM

[TCK:]

CNN stopped being relevant many years ago. Most ratings show their viewership has been falling consistently.

My opinion is that most thinking people stopped watching permanently when other options became available. I attribute this to their prevalence to left leaning views !

Jun 29 12:11 PM