Two things happened in London in the space
of 24 hours that, once again, had me – and plenty of others – musing on the
role of Twitter as a channel for breaking news.
On Thursday 26 April, there was an incident
on the Bakerloo line of the London Underground (that’s the brown one).
I learned about it first thanks to twitter.
But here’s what I learned. I learned that something had happened – it might
have been a tube train crash, or a collapsed tunnel, or a train might have hit
a bulge in the wall of a tunnel, or the tunnel might be flooded, or some
plasterwork might have fallen off the tunnel walls onto the track, or there
might have been a terrorist attack.
My, what a lot of things I learned from Twitter that morning.
I looked online at some reputable news
providers’ websites to see what I might learn from them. It took a while for the news to appear
on the likes of the BBC or the Evening Standard websites. As is right and
proper.
On Friday 27 April, news broke on Twitter
that there had been a bomb scare on Tottenham Court Road (a very busy shopping
street, complete with a major theatre, lots of offices, pubs, restaurants etc,
and a tube station that was featured in An American Werewolf in London). There
were pics too.
Someone observed that the bomb scare (which
during the time I was writing this piece morphed into a hostage situation) had
been trending on Twitter for half an hour, but still no mention on the
mainstream news sites…. prompting one person to ask “do we need 24hr news channels anymore?” (@mattaudley)
But I like this tweet best: “What the hell
is going on at #tcr?!?
The bazillion varied reports are bloody confusing!” (@/betti_ttt)
The story was still developing while I was writing, but this is the BBC's take on it. And as of the time I published this piece, there were no reports of injuries - I can only hope that stays the case.
Responsible journalism demands that stories
are confirmed ("stood up" in the vernacular). That you have more than one source
to corroborate the lead or rumour, and that you explore the facts. At its heart
the job of the journalist is to find out what is actually going on and present
people with reliable facts*. Otherwise news is nothing more than a lot of
rumour and speculation.
There is (and will always be) a role for traditional
journalism and regular news outlets – it’s in cutting through the confusion and
presenting people with the facts.
That’s something Twitter will never be able
to do, because even if one tweet gets immediately to the heart of the matter,
the next 50 might offer nothing but fear, uncertainty and doubt. And how on
earth is one to tell the difference.
* footnote: anyone who tells you journalism
is all about getting to "the truth" is either a self-aggrandising liar, or a
fool.
