May 2, 2011

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Although Twitter played a big part in spreading news of Osama bin Laden’s death, Simon Dumenco writes, “a lot of the hyperventilating about Twitter ‘breaking’ the bin Laden story is just bullshit.” Dumenco says Keith Urbahn, credited with breaking the news, was just sharing unconfirmed information like everyone else. And where did he get that information? According to Urbahn, “My source was a connected network TV news producer. Stories about ‘the death of MSM’ because of my ‘first’ tweet are greatly exaggerated.” Urbahn’s original tweet seemed credible to me because he is a governmental source, and I presumed that his source also was inside the government. Now I wonder whether what we took for “confirmation” was just speculation.

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Steve Myers was the managing editor of Poynter.org until August 2012, when he became the deputy managing editor and senior staff writer for The Lens,…
Steve Myers

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