Like a number of my friends I first learned of the NYC plane crash through Twitter. And saw the first picture there, courtesy of user JKrums and Twitpic. He was a passenger on one of the first ferries to go and help. This follows the Mumbai terror attacks where Twitter offered a lot of eyewitness accounts. It seems to be becoming a breaking news tool as well as a gossip platform.
I was alerted to the plane crash by former AP photographer Jim Macmillan - who reported today that Google Ads were offering a link asking if anyone was injured on the flight - and linking through to (ambulance-chasing?) lawyers....It's a niche world out there.
I still have an icky feeling about Twitter news gathering. Switching my Twitter on after a recent terrorist attrocity I noticed that while the "they are in our thoughts" mentality was oft repeated it was hard to miss the glee as people picked through the twitpics and tweets.
At times it felt like pretty distateful voyeurism.
Posted by: Steve Jackson | January 16, 2009 at 10:31 AM
Wow it,s beautiful
thank you for your news
Posted by: اس ام اس با حال اس ام اس باحال | January 19, 2009 at 07:37 AM
Richard,
I was hoping that you -- or someone over at the BBC -- would be blogging a bit about the Gaza appeal decision to not air appeals by the Disasters Emergency Committee, allowing them a chance to ideally get money in for humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
This was done "to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story."
But when did humanitarian assistance of whatever sort they can get into Gaza become a matter of partiality?
Why didn't DEC appeals on the BBC for help funding humanitarian assistance in the Darfur crisis raise questions of partiality? Couldn't the BBC be seen as injecting themselves editorially in the middle of a civil war, aiding those supporting the rebels? Why is Gaza an unsafe and unreliable place to provide aid, as compared to Darfur at the time of the airing of the first DEC appeals... especially given that the Sudanese government thought nothing about launching a major military offensive in the region, as soon as it was announced that the UN wanted to send aid and additional peacekeepers.
Wasn't Darfur just as dangerous and questionable an environment to send aid into as Gaza, if not considerably more so?
Posted by: Mark Kraft | January 26, 2009 at 11:18 AM