twitter vs conventional reporting
It has gotten increasingly bizarre the way the “news” gets out and our relationship with that phenomenon. Twitter and the way we traditionally get our news are diametrically opposed and we don’t seem to be really noticing it.
It’s like everyone is pretending that the normal modes of receiving our news and information are still professionally reliable and that we should trust what they say as being the truth. But Twitter has now been pretty much accepted as a venue for “truthful” information because it’s much more of a personal opinion outlet. Increasingly people who make the news and who write it are tweeting opinions that are at odds with what they professionally write.
This is very odd to say the least. It’s not just Trump who, as one example among many, had a raging meltdown live on his call into Fox News and then tweeted what a great and productive interview it was. We know it was a meltdown because we saw it. What we’re not so sure about is did Trump tweet just to throw us off or did he really believe what he tweeted.
More and more people are doing this. Tweets are posted here on DU all the time by public figures of every stripe which definitely have that personal touch of snark and sarcasm, or anger and outrage, but none of that seems to make it into traditional modes of communication which we refer to as the media.
I think all this is the process of a major change and overhaul of how we get truth. It’s with a strictly limited number of characters, but perhaps that’s the very reason tweets seem to cut to the chase. Twitter seems to be the new Wild West frontier for now where anything goes. It’s also the only venue where anyone and everyone can respond directly to someone and also reach everyone else and mostly it tends to feel like it’s the most honest and truthful venue. At least as far as personal opinions go.
Very interesting times indeed.
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