I’ve been reading about how the Osama bin Laden news broke last night, particularly bits about how Twitter played a (faux)-important role in it getting leaked before Obama got on the air, and all I could think about was this mock poster from a few years back. It’s obviously referring to something very different, but if you think about it what happened was that the President of the United States of America entrusted people in the government with this news, presumably told them to keep quiet about it, and still they couldn’t keep their mouths shut. Not even for an hour! Even though the news was good and there were no fleets sunk by letting it slip—no doubt a large part of why it did slip—you’d still think these people should be able to keep quiet regardless, especially when asked to by the motherbleeping President. While I’m all for the speed that news can spread thanks to services like Twitter, I must say I also think that some news deserve to be announced properly and with accuracy, rather than through unsourced, fragmented information which may or may not be true. Whether or not any false information was swirling around during the hour or so before Obama started talking last night I can’t say, but it wouldn’t surprise me as it seems to be par for the course these days for breaking news stories. For example, just recently, think about how congresswoman Giffords was reported dead even though she wasn’t, or how images from a movie were being passed around as being from the disaster in Japan. Twitter & Co. may be faster than the media of yesterday, but it also comes with the tiresome problem of having to sift through the bullshit to figure out what’s actually true and what’s actually happening. I’d go on about how Twitter is (to a degree) a falsely worshipped idol, and about how curbing misinformation is going to be one of the greatest challenges in this insta-news world we now find ourselves in, but I’m already way off topic so I think I’ll save that for another day.

I’ve been reading about how the Osama bin Laden news broke last night, particularly bits about how Twitter played a (faux)-important role in it getting leaked before Obama got on the air, and all I could think about was this mock poster from a few years back. It’s obviously referring to something very different, but if you think about it what happened was that the President of the United States of America entrusted people in the government with this news, presumably told them to keep quiet about it, and still they couldn’t keep their mouths shut. Not even for an hour! Even though the news was good and there were no fleets sunk by letting it slip—no doubt a large part of why it did slip—you’d still think these people should be able to keep quiet regardless, especially when asked to by the motherbleeping President.

While I’m all for the speed that news can spread thanks to services like Twitter, I must say I also think that some news deserve to be announced properly and with accuracy, rather than through unsourced, fragmented information which may or may not be true. Whether or not any false information was swirling around during the hour or so before Obama started talking last night I can’t say, but it wouldn’t surprise me as it seems to be par for the course these days for breaking news stories. For example, just recently, think about how congresswoman Giffords was reported dead even though she wasn’t, or how images from a movie were being passed around as being from the disaster in Japan. Twitter & Co. may be faster than the media of yesterday, but it also comes with the tiresome problem of having to sift through the bullshit to figure out what’s actually true and what’s actually happening.

I’d go on about how Twitter is (to a degree) a falsely worshipped idol, and about how curbing misinformation is going to be one of the greatest challenges in this insta-news world we now find ourselves in, but I’m already way off topic so I think I’ll save that for another day.