Social Software
What just happened with #trafigura?
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- Category: Collaboration
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- Written by angusf
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I am caught between thinking this is the end of traditional news right here, now today, and the rather conspiratorial thoughts that the twitter organism was mobilised like a kicked over ants nest by the master puppeteer journalists
Todays timeline from my point of view began at 07:27 with the BBC's Cellan Jones pushing me to read all about #trafigura
I followed the link, and read the piece in the Guardian with a good amount of outrage. I noticed the topic begin to trend on twitter. I started a search for the #trafigura hashtag in tweetdeck and I began to comment in my own small way about the Bill of Rights, and how this kind of thing simply misunderstands the real-time connected media world we live in whether informal or formal. Here are my first tweets. Knowing that Chuck Norris is a trending phenomena was just my sense of humour.
The formal media did not report it - twitter did.
A search on the hashtag found countless links to the documents in question. This is profound. BBC and Sky both must have known about the story but felt unable to even publish the side story of a developing real-time revolution online. Surely its an erosion of democracy when you can't report trending topics that are happening on the Internet in real-time.
Google news picked it up eventually, but still nothing on the mainstream news networks.
It became a trending topic on twitter and a flash-mob demonstration was organised for tomorrow complete with its own web site to deal with the evil censorship of free speech and the goings on in our democracy.
Cave in? Not yet it seems
Inevitably the carter ruck caved, or did they... The BBC reported it this afternoon, and a couple of hours later Sky News picked it up. And as of this writing #CarterRuck and #Trafigura are suing BBC Newsnight for expose of toxic waste story - we're not done here http://bit.ly/15F91h was just posted on tweetdeck. They cant win this? Can they?
Profound tipping point for 'official media'
I just wonder where this leaves us. No doubt you need investigative journalism of a professional nature, but here you have a story that could not be printed even though the journalists had the data and the informtion. The truth will always out I suppose. I am caught between thinking this is the end of traditional news right here, now today, and the rather conspiratorial thoughts that the twitter organism was mobilised like a kicked over ants nest by the master puppeteer journalists who wanted to get one over on the old farts but couldnt possibly commment on it themselves....
Newsnight
Newsnight covered the issue last night, with Paxo interviewing a couple of lawyers. They didnt seem to want to acknowledge the people power of the socia networks, and despite the naming of the report and its trending as a hashtag on twitter, they couldnt name the report anyway. I was underwhelmed.
I wonder if I will get a cease and desist notice for having the temerity to copy matters of public record on the timeline to my web site. Is it the 21st Century or 1984?