Last night the twitter-sphere was the perfect example of the constant news cycle, as this NYT media decoder blog post shows. Just after 11:30pm, Obama confirmed the death of al-Qaida’s chief, Osama bin Laden. Yet, at around 9:45 the White House communications director had announced on twitter that Obama was going to be making an special speech. Almost immediately, people began to speculate what the announcement would be about. Just before 10:30, the first “official” tweet with this information read “so I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.” With this, government officials started giving network news outlets anonymous information almost an hour before the President was able to make his own speech on the death.
In class we talked about how news organization was able to guess Kennedy’s plans naval plans in reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis but was able to quell reporters and make an official announcement himself. With social media cites, like Twitter, it becomes easier for the media to get in contact with government officials or be in touch with each other about possible clues. Of course, a lot of these tweets were coming from unofficial sources or were just speculation. It seems like this was one of the first times the media was actually steps ahead of the President. What does this mean for the future of special presidential announcements?
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