Twitter 2; Mainstream media 0 – Lessons of Trafigura and Gateley
For those who do not follow the British media, there have been two major stories involving Twitter within the last few days that offers lessons for the rest of the world including Australia.
The first story broke on October 13 when Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian tweeted: “Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain?”
John Wilkes had campaigned in the 18th century for the right to report parliamentary proceedings.
Rusbridger’s tweet was a clue to the blogosphere that the Guardian had been served with an injunction so wide ranging it could not even report the existence of the injunction, or subsequently a question that was asked about it in Parliament. The tweet related to a question asked by the MP Paul Farrelly (himself a former journalist) about a company called Trafigura and the dumping of toxic waste in Africa.
Absolutely – it’s been a week that’s again answered the question of what Twitter is good for.
In fact it was 3-0, there is also the case of the London Underground staff member who verbally abused an elderly passenger who had the misfortune of being caught in a door (http://bit.ly/4kpmBY).
Unfortunately for Transport for London, a blogger called Jonathan MacDonald was on the platform and filmed the whole thing. Jonathan filmed it on Thursday, by Friday morning it was on Twitter and Friday afternoon the front page of the Standard
Tim, your typing is getting worse! Good story though.
Love the title – absolute score to Twitter and again proving that the media landscape has changed for good. I’m based in the UK and run a social media agency and have been following this closely, it’s examples like these that will speed up adoption of Twitter and social media in general, where it hasn’t already.
Good piece. I’ve written a blog about Jan Moir and social media here: http://bit.ly/4kEfej
Thanks
Simon
Unfortunately while I entirely applaud the positive outcomes outlined above from the movements of the past week, I have to agree with Julian Assange’s comments that characterising the Trafigura affair as a ‘win for free speech’ is missing the point.
While I think that Twitter especially has become a force for good as far as outing issues like the Trafigura gag order, the notoriously fickle nature of the Twitterverse means that the whole affair is slowly sliding south without having really accomplished the main goal of the protesters, which was the removal of the gag order itself. Not wanting to detract from the fact that Trafigura were forced into releasing information about the whole affair and going public, just saying that a smart debate is important, not chest-beating and self congratulations that miss the nub of the issue.
My admiration for (and involvement in) Twitter doesn’t change, however it is important to remember that Twitter follows the same rules as the rest of our social interactions – they’re fickle, they’re generally led by specific groups of alpha individuals, they’re quick to move on to the next discussion and they can be all of vain, stupid, arrogant and thoughtless. Any discussion of this nature should always be a balance of self congratulation and learning.
Bloody hell that all sounded holier- than-thou didn’t it…might have to go off and tweet about Glee now to balance that up…
🙂