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An endemic symptom of journalism’s decline is the oft-seen line that some or other flap has sparked “a Twitter storm“. After noting such an eruption, the business of re-writing press releases is temporarily suspended for the bulk quoting of the latest 140-character messages on whatever topic has set the social-media set to thumb-typing its collective thoughts.
At the Fairfax papers, where incompetent management and editors who don’t edit continue to foul what was once a left-but-sane news organisation, quoting Twitter and Facebook posts is a daily exercise, which isn’t hard to explain. As senior, experienced journalists have been replaced by cheaper and largely unsupervised hip-dude kiddies, it is hardly surprising the newsroom perspective would frame social media as an accurate reflection of majority opinion. The twitterverse is, after all, where young reporters encounter social circles of the like-minded — not to mention their activist J-school professors — so it must represent real-world passions and sympathies, right?
Not so, says Darren Davis of Clear Channel Networks, the broadcaster which syndicates US talk-show titan Rush Limbaugh, who has been the object of many notably unsuccessful, activist-inspired boycotts for, amongst other things, mercilessly lampooning the left. As Davis explains:
“We have found that 70% of the attacks are coming from just 10 people. Ten people around America – and we know who they are — sit at their computers all day sending out tweets, then use computer technology to amplify them.…”
Someone should tweet a link to Davis’ thoughts. Fairfax’s remaining editors — that would be the ones bereft of mate or spouse to land them jobs at the ABC — might then believe it to be true.
