Mumbai, Twitter and live updates

Mumbai, Twitter and live updates

www.bbc.co.uk

There's been discussion of the role played by Twitter in the reporting of the Mumbai attacks and of the way that we made use of it on the BBC News website.

A graphic of the BBC News websiteDuring the crisis, we monitored this microblogging service, along with the material being filed by our own reporters and a wide range of other sources, and referenced or linked to all of these on a "live updates" page as the events unfolded.

Our aim with these pages (we did something similar during the US election) is to provide news, analysis, description and comment in short snippets as soon as it becomes available. It is a running account, where we are making quick judgments on and selecting what look like the most relevant and informative bits of information as they come in, rather than providing the more considered version of events we are able to give in our main news stories of the day.

(visit the link for the full news article)

So, the BBC appear to be torn between allowing live updates as a crisis unfolds - thus allowing the consumer to make up their own mind about the truth to a situation, and restricting what goes out to their own 'verified' sources.

This could be interesting indeed for the conspiracy theorist.

If the BBC do indeed allow twitter and other microblogging updates as major events unfold, it will make it much much easier to spot changes, omissions and half truths in official versions of events.

They say that the updates did not really add much, but I think that they did. It gives an alternative viewpoint - allows the reader to focus on something that the media may not want them to.

BBC - I hope you decide to run with this method of reporting in future. The article suggests that you will.

In a way - I feel that this is a conspiracy theorists charter and could really open up the floodgates when in comes to getting to the 'truth' - in terms of what is happening on the ground to real people - of a crisis.

What do we think?

Peace,

MGGG

www.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)