As the Islamic republic of Iran faces a crisis of legitimacy and authority, another totality faces a great crisis of legitimacy and authority as well.

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As the Islamic republic of Iran faces a crisis of legitimacy and authority, another totality faces a great crisis of legitimacy and authority as well.

Each time an Iranian tweets, each time another live blogging update is made, each time somebody surfing the Internet chooses to check The Daily Dish, the NIAC blog, or the Huffington Post instead of a mainstream news media source for an update on what's happening Iran, the corporate news media becomes more and more impotent.

A nation with a vibrant population of youthful bloggers and tweeters is spurning a democratization of media that the corporate news media never expected. The technology of YouTube, Facebook, blogs, the Internet, and Twitter have combined to create a means for thousands of people in Iran to send dispatches on what is really happening as their government works to stall the use of technology and limit journalism in the country.

The failure of the American news media isn't just why Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish has received and posted comments like these:

"The Cable News Networks have been a joke-- CNN has been awful as you've heard but at least they're talking about it.  MSNBC has been showing their stupid documentaries all weekend and FOX has barely mentioned the story lest it get in the way of hours and hours of Obama-bashing (the only time I've seen it discussed was in terms of how badly Obama is handling it)."

"All the lesser news sites are just running AP feeds and AP's reports are barely skimming the surface of what's going on.  Everywhere else is pretty much silence-- it's like the entire news industry has taken the weekend off and just can't be bothered to work over the weekend...Thank you for doing all that you have on this.  It's been incredible reading your site over the past few days and it's shown more than anything all of the promise of the new media"

It's behind the words of Rachel Maddow's segment on Monday night's show called "Media@Iran."

MADDOW: It rained at my house all weekend -- which was awesome because I had no guilt about not working outside and instead staying inside all day having an intense news experience of what is going on in Iran. There was, of course, actual mainstream news reporting of what was going on there, but, like many people, I essentially built my own coverage from first-person, eyewitness accounts: Iranians uploading digital pictures and videos taken with cell phones or with flip cams, writing about their experiences on blogs, on Twitter, on the open comments sections of major news sites.

Not every Iranian, of course, has access to the Internet, and so, what you're able to get online is undoubtedly a view of the situation that is skewed toward the young and tech-savvy. But it's intoxicating to be able to get that real-time, unfiltered experience of what's happening from the people who are, themselves, experiencing it.

It's why E.D. Kain over at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen wrote this posting:

If you were reading the Dish this weekend you were living in a different universe from someone watching Fox or MSNBC.  There is very little difference between no information and misinformation.  That is what the American people are getting – a starvation diet of no news and lots of empty carbs.  Fatty, salty food with no nutritional value.  And we're too damn apathetic to demand better.  There is a great divide in the decisions we make as an informed populace vs the decisions we make as an uninformed or misinformed one.  The people I know who rely on the MSM for their news consistently know less about what actually happened than my blogger friends do, and have less nuanced opinions about these events.  That's a damn shame if you ask me.  It leads to the support of bad policy.

As Marc Ambinder explains it on The Atlantic website, "we've got reliable Humint." A plethora of first hand accounts is making it possible to truly get an accurate picture of what is going on in a crisis (in addition to the fact that it can stymie the effects of media blackout) and we are able to get this picture without turning our boob tubes on. 

The people of the world are able to have a "real-time, unfiltered experience of what's happening from the people who are, themselves, experiencing it." They are able to feel a euphoric reaction in their mind, a euphoric reaction which consequentially leads to the humanization of a people a majority of Americans were once in favor of bombing.

The new media that includes Twitter has produced a synergy where others are working with Iranians to spread information and wage campaigns from the outside that they would like to see waged. Two campaigns have already been waged successfully.

Yesterday, at 5 pm ET, when sites liveblogging the demonstrations and violence in Iran noticed Twitter was planning maintenance for 9:45 PT, a campaign began that involved the inclusion of #TwitterStayUp and #NoMaintenance tags. 

After a couple hours, the campaign was a success and Twitter rescheduled its maintenance for 2:30 PT (1:30 am ET in Iran).

Perhaps, somebody in the Obama Administration noticed the trending topic on Twitter because on Tuesday it was reported that Obama's State Department intervened so that Iranians could use this communications tool throughout the day on Tuesday when they would be demonstrating. 

The other campaign took place over the weekend as millions tweeted #CNNFail in response to the lack of coverage of Iran on CNN.

On the "#CNNFail Uprising":

As the Iranian election aftermath unfolded in Tehran--thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to express their anger at perceived electoral irregularities--an unexpected hashtag began to explode through the Twitterverse: "CNNFail."

Even as Twitter became the best source for rapid-fire news developments from the front lines of the riots in Tehran, a growing number of users of the microblogging service were incredulous at the near total lack of coverage of the story on CNN, a network that cut its teeth with on-the-spot reporting from the Middle East...

...CNN just loops the same stories endlessly, while ignoring the biggest story," posted Twitter user MediaButcher.

"CNN needs to talk about the important things like Ms. California and who Paris Hilton is (sleeping with)," wrote Twitter user ArchivalQuality."

It's ironic that CNN bore the brunt of the MSM backlash that was waged in the Twitterverse. CNN is the only news organization I know of that regularly reads Twitter messages during its newscasts.

Rick Sanchez defended CNN's coverage. And, to a certain extent, he's right. CNN actually covered this story that should have been "Breaking News" every hour on all of the 24-hour news channels. But, perhaps, it's really not all that ironic at all.

What do you remember about CNN when it reads off tweets on the air? Do they ever analyze the information that is coming in from "viewers" or do they simply pass over the messages and use them as a segue into the next news segment on pop culture in America? 

CNN didn't fail because it failed to cover the story of Iran or even Twitter. It has failed like the other MSM news organizations because it hasn't produced the same kind of analysis that smart observers (i.e. independent bloggers) are producing as they pour through the information that is escaping Iran.

It and other organizations fail because the organizations use a model that relies on pundits and so-called experts and doesn't include much reporting from countries outside the U.S. at all. This model cannot compete with the visceral experience that the Twitter model produces and often lacks entirely the perspective of the culture of people which are being impacted by the stories which are unfolding.

With the Iranian government cracking down on foreign journalists and refusing to renew visas or limiting what news bureaus can report, one might think news organizations would jump on board this media revolution and take part in the democratization of media.

But, the democratization of media threatens the job security and the self-image of all in the American press. It is something they will, except for a few shows on MSM channels, ignore.

The blogging revolution was born because a news media in America acted like lapdogs during the Bush Administration. They cheerleaded as the case for an illegal and inhumane war in Iraq was made by the Bush Administration and up until Bush's last year in office they did very little to question his horrible policies and ideas which were a detriment to all of humanity.

The birth of new media has given the Iranians the ability to continue their mobilization in Iran. It has made it possible for an American public to stay interested in the world outside of America's borders.

People are noticing the failure of the main news organizations in America and they are choosing to get their information from blogs and Internet news organizations instead of the corporate news media establishment they used to trust in.

No, some could argue that it is more truthful. More egalitarian. Now more than ever (and rightfully so), anyone and everyone can influence the public discourse worldwide and have an impact on what people know just by choosing to compile news information as it flows out of Iran and post it somewhere online.

Years from now, we may look back and say this was the turning point---when the dominance of corporate news was successfully and rightfully subverted by an egalitarian media, a media that could be used by anybody that could get to a computer and type, when Iranians showed Americans how we too can use technology to revitalize and energize support for change in our system of government.

We may weep for those pundits who work within the Big Five news media corporations and whose downfall may be inevitable now that people have witnessed the power of Twitter and the use of public proxies to get YouTube video and Facebook reports to the world on what's happening in Iran. 

On second thought, why weep? They deserve what's coming to them. 

Addendum 

Great response to this article, which I posted on Open Salon. aaronrury commented: 

I think there are major problems with both sides of this argument. First, you are very right to challenge the MSM's ability and willingness to cover what is happening in Iran. But considering that those protesting comprise a very small percentage of the Iranian, even those that voted, there is a question that is begged. Is this really newsworthy? More than that, if protests of BOTH national conventions prior to this past national election in the US are not newsworthy, why are Iranian protests? Because more things are on fire?

It seems like there is a portion of the city of Tehran that is very upset with the results. Unfortunately for them, the rest of Iran is much more conservatives than they are and make a significantly larger proportion of the populace that took part in the vote. Given all of that, maybe there really isn't a story behind these protests other than people being wholeheartedly disappointed in the outcome.

As far as reports from Iran go, there are also problems. Because those who would be for the 'reformist' candidate are also well-educated and well-funded, they are more likely to have access to things like the internet and the several types of software that people use on the internet. I can tell you right now that if an Iranian came on OS and started blogging what was happening it would be front cover material. But there is an inherent bias in such an approach to getting our information. Because only those would be opposed to the incumbent based on socio-economic status have access to the internet, it seems like all the reports of from people who have had their vote 'stolen'. But those who are much poorer and more likely to vote for the incumbent are under-reported because they can't get on Twitter or what have you. You don't get the whole story from Iranian twitters or tweets or whatever the hell they're called.

This is a very interesting exercise in what to expect in the coming decades as more and more people have access to more and more people via the internet and its mesmerizing software. I think you're right in general that having as many eyes on the situation is a better solution and the MSM's eyes weren't that good to begin with. The more eyes the herd has the better it is to see a predator. But sometimes filter are a good thing. It's hard for me to figure out what purpose, good or bad, such a filter serves here.

Authors Bio:
Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof Press. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, "Unauthorized Disclosure." He was an editor for OpEdNews.com