Twitter 1 MSM 0

Image by inju via Flickr

Yesterday was interesting. Twitter once again ruled the news agenda of mainstream media (MSM) networks as the world's editors finally woke up to the fact (where have you been, CNN?) that something enormous, potentially agenda-changing and highly significant was unfolding in Iran.

From the beatings of students in their dormitories (a story that broke on Twitter, with Twitpics of damaged dorms and bruised students) through to the unfolding 'is it on is it off' drama of the march on Tehran by the green banner-waving opposition crowd (some estimates had it at 2 million and more), the news was happening on Twitter significantly ahead of coverage on the MSM.

This meant that major outlets such as CNN, ABC, Sky and the BBC were all reduced to referencing Twitter in their coverage. The actual Twitter output was massive, reaching several tweets a second going into the late afternoon, and the feeds started to get confusing with rumours spreading and people tweeting and retweeting new information almost regardless of its source. A colossal number of people used Twitter, blogs and Facebook to follow events in Iran yesterday simply because the traditional media failed so badly in understanding that we care about this news. It was a massive editorial misstep that you could argue was only avoided by the BBC which with its Persian service, was at least trying to stream live from the streets.

The news media on the ground, under-resourced, restricted and rightly fearful in the face of baton-wielding nasties in and out of uniform (Take a look at this chilling image of, I understand, government Basij militia from yesterday afternoon) simply couldn’t keep up with the flow of witnesses on the ground. Some quite organised student groups were using mobiles to text news from the crowd back to Twitterers who stayed online using their dial-up connections and switching proxy servers to keep trying to get the news through. It reminded me a little of Salam Pax, the Iraqi blogger who kept information coming out of Baghdad in the face of the American invasion and Iraqi resistance.

Problems

This stream of information from a confused, dangerous and yet highly important series of events on the ground raises a number of problems. The first of these is provenance. How do you KNOW you’re watching a Twitter feed from a genuine Iranian student and not a hoaxer or, even worse, state-owned instrument of instability. For instance, a foreign intelligence outfit could quite nicely stoke up international concern and damaging coverage by pretending to be a witness – and we’re all credulous enough to take the bait because, let's face it, we want to see social media beating up the MSM.

So how do we know you’re real?

My own personal test is a website or blog. If the Twitterer links to one of those, you have the chance to have a quick browse and test an established track record and a history of conversation. Another test is personal relationship – if someone with whom I have an established online relationship can vouch for the new contact, then I’ll usually take that as a bona fide contact. And another is longevity - I prefer sources that were online and have a track record before the events in question took place.

Keeping a cool head can be hard in the face of the excitement, but there’s nothing worse than finding yourself accused of blindly repeating BS – or being unhelpful in your attempts to help. For instance, at the height of yesterday’s events, people were retweeting lists of alternative proxies. That was cluttering up the stream and generally getting in the way. If you’re based in North America and have no Iranian friends, retweeting a proxy server with an #iranelection hashtag is hardly going to add utility to the conversation, for instance.

Some MSM pundits were pointing out that the information on Twitter wasn’t reliable. I thought it was. Following the couple of simple rules above and waiting a little to have news confirmed by multiple sources, I got compelling information and images from on the ground witness sources often hours before the broadcast media.

The other thing I found interesting about yesterday was that the audience was self-selecting. Those of us that cared – because we have Iranian friends, relations, business interests or any other tie to the events in Tehran – could select the information we wanted and decide how we wanted to receive it. We could dip into the story for an update whenever we wanted, dedicating the appropriate measure of time we all wanted to give to updating ourselves. No advertising breaks, no filler stories about Ping Pong the panda and her lovely babies and no celebrity guff about Paris Modhesh or the like (you still there CNN?) getting in the way.

Was yesterday a great day for social media? Yes. Was it a worrying day for ‘traditional media’? Without a doubt, yes. Does this mean MSM is dead? I don’t think so. But I do think it’s a very clear signal that we are in a time of immense change and if big business news organisations don’t get it together fast, they’re going to get hit, hard.

People are finding a faster, fresher, more vibrant, immediate and real source of news and information. It's other people.

Who's the F***ing Superpower Here?

Image via Wikipedia

Many years ago I used to manage the Middle East PR account of a certain very large software company. I went to Paris for a conferency thing with them and there I met, over dinner, the general manager of their Israeli operation. It was an odd moment. Coming from very different sides of the fence (or, if you prefer, security wall), we had both spent a great deal of time managing reactions to each other’s operations in our respective markets. Initially somewhat wary of each other, we got on fine, as it turned out.

In over 20 years of working in and travelling around the Middle East, I have always tried as hard as I could to remain objective about Israel and the actions of its government. It’s been difficult at times, I have to admit. But I’m also conscious of how easy it would be to slip into an unthinkingly anti-Israeli stance when your friends and colleagues have been so caught up in the conflict and wickedness that has burned so long on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.

My friend Jacks came back from a trip to Qana with UNIFIL carrying photographs of the burned children in the smoke-blackened remains. It’ll be a long time before I forget those. She was a nervous wreck at the time, having spent weeks travelling around Southern Lebanon. I have stood in Beirut as the Israeli jets overfly the city on one of their window smashing trips, breaking the sound barrier purposefully so that everyone underneath gets the message. I have watched colleagues reduced to tears as they try to telephone their families under bombardment. I watched in horror last year, thanks to Palestinian news agency Ramattan’s rooftop camera, as Israel pointlessly smashed its way through the ghetto of Gaza with massive military force, blotting hundreds innocents out of existence as they went.

When I wrote Olives, the second book wot I writed, I tried desperately hard to retain a sense of balance. The book’s about a journalist who gets caught up in a series of bombings in Jordan and Israel. It’s necessarily told from an Arab perspective because our man is living in Amman and falls in love with a nice local girl, but despite that I wanted to make sure that it didn’t demonise or dehumanise the people over the border. I hope I was successful in that.

I completely lost any sense of objectivity last night. Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech had me raging. An exercise in indefensible, calculated wickedness, I believe it demonstrated how incredibly out of touch Israel’s government is. There cannot be room in the world for people like that – people who will so willingly and glibly consign others to poverty and disease, despair and degradation. Netanyanhu trotted out the same awful Zionist claptrap, the same distortions that gave us ‘A land without a people for a people without a land.’ But for some reason, this time it made me angry. I think perhaps because his words are so completely out of step with any sense of justice or fairness, so totally out of touch with the mood and spirit of the time.

It’s become so entrenched in Israeli policy, this idea that you have to go to the negotiating table hard, that you’d be forgiven for thinking that Benji’s just setting the stage for a tough tussle with Barack’s boys. By resetting the border lines with the wall (so that it encompasses extensive water resources on the Israeli side), by creeping into the post-1967 areas with settlements, Israel’s continued, inexorable progress across the map of Palestine has left only a tiny area of the least viable land for any Palestinian state to occupy. And yet even now Netanyahu’s government will continue to build settlements, will continue to use their own people as tools in the Great Game, the vicious land grab that has become core to Israeli policy. Is he just squaring up for that great, final negotiation or is he genuinely so arrogant that he believes that Israel will be allowed to continue on this course? Bill Clinton’s reaction on meeting Netanyahu possibly gives us the answer to that one.

The great difference of course is that now these words are being heard by a world that has had a chance to see quite how evilly the Israeli government is willing to behave towards the people whose farms and land were appropriated in the country’s founding. The flow of information means that people around the world are more informed, have access to the other side of the story – the side that has been so marginalised for so long.

Obama’s overture to the Arab World was a major signal that the US administration understands what George Bush’s dumb hick neo-con monkeys failed to grasp. Settle the Palestinian issue and you will not only bring the prospect of wealth and hope back to the Middle East but you will defuse the extremism that has torn the region apart for so long.

Benji’s failed to grasp that one, too.

What surprises me is why Israeli students aren’t on the streets trying to get rid of their evil old men, too.

Iran Media Coverage Fail

View Larger Map

Watching Sky News over the weekend just reinforced my growing irritation with ‘traditional’ media. There’s a big bust up over budget caps in Formula One racing and Ferrari, among others, is playing hardball with F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone – a news item repeated constantly through the weekend. At no point did anyone explain what the bust up was actually about. The repetitive coverage of the same news file means we never drill down into the story and so I end up having to Google it to find out the answers to my obvious questions - the questions, incidentally, of journalism 101 - what, where, why, when, who, how?

Similarly, there’s no analysis of Mousavi’s role in the Iranian elections, no depth on offer at all, just a number of sound bites filmed with over-excited girls in hijab. And so I have to Google him, too, to get the background I feel I need to form my opinion.

By Saturday afternoon, I've given up watching repeats of Tim and Ashish and I’m getting my Iran election news from Twitter – a good selection of opinions, breaking news and links to better and more in-depth sources than Sky. I’ve not even got a Twitterfall going on it, that’s just the commentary from Tweeple. And the Iranians among them are sharing links to articles that reinforce and deepen my knowledge of the elections, widening my horizons and engaging my (I admit, unusually active) curiosity.

Amanda Knox is standing trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher. That one’s repeated again and again, but there’s no coverage of her actual testimony. Whatever happened to the boyfriend? Again, Sky ain’t telling. Googled.

So I'm getting my news analysis from search, from Twitter and from online news sources. And increasingly I'm getting my news from these sources, too. Because Sky, an important UK news provider, simply isn't giving me the news I want with the information, intelligence and drill-down I want.

Increasingly, I’m finding that my, and others’, curiosity is finding itself satisfied by online sources and not news media. Other people are asking the same questions and the answers are easier to find online through social sites, searching news sites, using RSS. I’m getting more depth of information, a broader reach of public opinion – both international and local to the event – and talking to people about stuff as it develops.

This morning there’s a new Twitter hashtag - #CNNfail – and it's a top 'trending topic' on Twitter, a reaction from thousands of people using Twitter who are learning more about the elections and subsequent riots there from Twitter than they are from CNN - which has been apparently failing completely to cover the entire process.

As traditional newspapers continue to struggle, many depending on newswires that consumers are perfectly able to read for themselves and unable to deliver the breadth of witness, comment and opinion available to us online, I do wonder how long it will be before we finish with this pointless journalism/bloggers debate and recognise that our news media is changing in a fast and fundamental shift that will wipe out many of the less agile players.

Warning! Phishing! Fraud! Shock! Horror!

Image via Wikipedia

Etisalat has done it again.

Not content with sending a warning email to subscribers that contained the immortal words 'Etisalat will never email links' and that also contained (almost inevitably) two links, the telco that likes to say 'shou?' has now sent an email to its lucky subscribers further warning them of the dangers of phishing.

"Security Alert - Beware of Email Fraud Disguised as Official Etisalat Emails" trumpets the email subject line. Inside, we have a picture of a cursor pointer being snared by a barbed fish hook and the word, in red mind you, WARNING! Golly, they must be serious!

The email also contains the following words:

NOTE:Etisalat will never ask you for neither your Internet/Email passwords nor any other personal details by Email, Internet or phone. Please do not disclose any of your Etisalat services passwords to any person.

And then, inevitably, at the bottom of the mail is a link out to this online form, which asks for your name, username, telephone number and email address.

The Internet. A rich and wonderful place...

Oh NOES! Modhesh is BACK!

Golly! Has it really been ten long years?

He's started to pop up around the city again, little splashes of yellow now adorn every street sign and grassy verges carry life-sized statues of the infinite-eyed one. Soon we'll be inundated with the little swine (sorry, 'beloved icon') and his unique brand of fun. And somehow I think we're going to see more of him than usual as Dubai kicks into uber-promotional mode to counter the slowdown.

Membership of that naughty Facebook group has started to rise again. I wouldn't mind taking anyone's money that it'll be over the 1,000 mark by the weekend.

We can only be grateful that they left it so late to get everything going - it's only three days until the Dubai Summer Surprises shopping festival starts and he's only just starting to pop up everywhere.

Apparently Modhesh Fun City is to become Modhesh World this year. The slightly muckle-headed announcement fails to give a location, but we can only assume the Airport Expo. This will be home, the announcement gushes, to over 37,000 square metres of fun.

I can't wait.

The My Modhesh website is currently crashing when you click on any of the tabs to the left of the home page, which is quite fun. And the DSF Website is still carrying January dates on its page heads and a January release on its home page, despite all the over-excited claptrap on there about how Modhesh is a harbinger of cheer for small children everywhere. Mind you, it could be worse. It could be 'Under Construction' like the Dubai Summer Surprises website!

They'll need to spruce those up in the next day or two, won't they?

Mrs Google and her Five Lovely Daughters

Image via CrunchBase

Have you ever Googled yourself? Feel free to go ahead and try it. There's no shame. Everyone does it, they just don't tend to boast about it in public much.

Are you the first search result? If not, someone else owns you. Now if you’re called Amy Winehouse or Barack Obama, the chances of you doing something about it are pretty slim, but all is not lost: bear in mind most people will refine a search for a common name - with a location or profession, for instance.

Search is a funny and arcane little game, but broadly search engines prioritise sites by their popularity using a mixture of relevance, links to the site and traffic. Blogs get treated incredibly well by search engines, as does Wikipedia. If you’re mentioned on a major website or a blog, it’s likely that this mention will pop up first – the minor vertical industry website about melamine production in Kamchatka likely won’t rise to the top of the pile.

If you’re not on the first page of search results, a lot of people won’t bother going on to wherever you are to be found down the pecking order.

Why does it matter? Increasingly, you want people to find you online – because increasingly, people look for people online. A recent ‘straw poll’ we conducted over Twitter saw over 85% of respondents saying that they researched new business contacts online before meeting them. So the person you’re shaking hands with for the first time likely already has a view and opinion of you – and he/she found just what you found when you searched yourself.

Can you do something about it? Sure. Get online and join up for professional networking sites like LinkedIn. Think about how people would find you and use those phrases wherever you are interacting online or writing content for online media (‘John Smith Dubai Creative’). Give your Facebook profile a spring clean and spend a little time trying out some social media interactions.

You never know, taking a look at that search result and putting yourself in the shoes of a recruiter, potential employer, new business prospect or supplier may just be what it takes for you to start working on your online profile and investing a little time in a Google Makeover!

This piece originally appeared as one of the chucklesomely named 'A Moment with McNabb' columns in Campaign Middle East magazine. I have to put it here ‘cos they haven’t got a website yet and don’t post it to their own damn blog.

Obama in Cairo

"The history of the relationship between America and the Muslim World is deeper and more complex than the common perception might suggest. Thomas Jefferson taught himself Arabic using his own Quran kept in his personal library, and had the first known presidential Iftaar by breaking fast with the Tunisian Ambassador at sunset."

Just in case you're interested:

The Whitehouse Blog.

The Facebook Video feed for the speech, to be given at 2pm Dubai time.

I think this is potentially the most important American speech in 25 years...

(PS, the comment from brn to this post is that most embarrassing of things, a comment that's more insightful and readable than the post it adorns. Recommended reading, then!)

Facebook and Disaster

Image via Wikipedia

7Days, with its superior sense of news, leads with the tragic story of Ana Negra Barrabeig, the Dubai based woman who lost her life, returning from her honeymoon, on AF447. Tragically, her new husband took another flight back to Dubai as he had to return to work. Ana had planned to spend a few days with relatives in Spain on her way back.

The story is heartbreaking enough, but there's a macabre little postscript for those of us that like to follow the ins and outs of social media and its growing role in our lives.

Ana's Facebook page is still up, you see. And so journalists researching the story have been able to get details about her employer, her friends (I can only assume friends are getting Facebook and other requests from media) and also have been able to trawl through her photographs and other personal information posted up on the site.

I'd link to her page, but it feels like such a scandalous invasion. Maybe I'm being funny about it.

I had never, strangely, thought about this possibility. I have worked with media on the trail of a 'big' story on many occasions and it's always an interesting experience. The story is everything and woe betide anyone who gets in the way of it. Media will try literally anything to get that 'edge' that 'angle' - including faking sympathy, concern and trying every back door to get through to the subject.

But the media looking into AF447 had a new first port of call. They just had to Google the names of the passengers on the list and start digging into their online background. There it all is - pals, fears, hopes, photographs. Everything you'd want to get started on that story about the people who were lost.

Here's a thought, peeps. Take a look at your online self. What would you be leaving behind if, God Forbid, you were taken suddenly?

Air Outpost

I love HDR. Official.

This might not be a technically ‘correctly composed’ shot, but it makes a smashing desktop image (if I say so myself) – drop me a mail or a Tweet if you’d like a full sized image. Nick probably won’t apply. ;)

The image was taken in a mooch around a much-loved monument; Sharjah’s Mahatta Fort Museum. If you haven’t been there, I can only urge you to go.

A nice little slice of the UAE’s history – and a little slice of British history too, is wrapped up in the story of this odd little fort.

Mahatta Fort used to be a mile from the old town of Sharjah. Today it’s enveloped in the city – but the road outside that leads from the traffic lights just down from Mega Mall past the ‘Saudi Mosque’ and through Ittihad Square to meet ‘Smile You’re Insane’ (Sorry, ‘Smile You’re In Sharjah’) roundabout is suspiciously straight and slab-like, with dribbles of bitumen infilling the slabs. There’s a reason for that – the road is actually the old runway of Sharjah International Airport, before the airport was moved out of the city.

In 1937 this runway was a sand landing strip and served Imperial Airways, the (at the time) miraculous air-route that led from Croydon to Australia – a route that traversed Europe, taking passengers to Egypt and from there either through Darkest Africa to Cape Town or through Darkest Arabia through India, Asia and down to Australasia.

This first ever attempt to create a global airway brought the whole (Sun Never Sets On It) British Empire together. It meant travelling from Croydon to the desert town of Sharjah in just four days! From South East Asia, the Imperial Airways service was handed over to the Queensland and Northern Territories Airline Service. You’ll likely recognise it better as QANTAS.

We have a copy of the documentary film Air Outpost, made in 1937 about this remarkable desert airstrip, the fort that was built by the Sheikh of Sharjah to house the 38 passengers of each flight and protect them from marauding bedouin as they made their way through from Alexandria via ‘Bahrein’ to Qwaidar in Baluchistan and on to Karachi in India. In the morning after the Alexandria overnight stop, staff would have to be despatched to the city’s brothels to round up wayward passengers. Honest.

Sharjah held no such attractions, of course...

The film itself is important, credited as being likely the first ever true ‘documentary’ film, one of a series made by director Alexander Korda for Imperial Airways by his London Films company – and featuring a soundtrack composed by William Alwyn, now recognised as an important C20th British composer. The film is preposterous in the extreme, from the quoits-chucking Brit goons playing in the courtyard of Mahatta to while away the time between arrivals through to the stiff fish carried on donkey-back from the ‘Arab city of Shar-Jar’ to serve the lucky guests. There’s even a grumpy looking Scottish station manager who signals to the Sikh walla to ring the bell announcing the arrival of the flight – using, as the instruction, the very same bell-ringing motion he could have used to damn well do it himself. The Iranian petrol-boys play cards as they wait for the flight to arrive and the Sheikh's guard of honour turns out to greet the passengers. Tally ho!

It still amuses me greatly.

The planes used to fly from Alexandria to Gaza in Palestine, and then on to Habbaniya and Baghdad by following ‘The Trench’ – a guideline laid across the black desert of Northern Trans-Jordan by trawling a bunch of chains behind a tractor. After the overnight stop in Baghdad, it was off to Basra, Kuwait, Bahrain and, finally, a landing in Sharjah as the last of the day’s light played itself out.

Imperial Airways eventually became BOAC, the British Overseas Airline Corporation and then just simply British Airways.

Sharjah airport was used to house Spitfires in WWII (A pal of my dad’s used to fly ‘em here – “What you want to live in Dubai for, boy? It’s just a bunch of mud huts on a creek!” I kid you not) and then flew commercial stuff until the new airport was built and Mahatta fell into disuse. The extensive (and fascinating) area of Nissen huts and workshop buildings that used to litter a swathe of central Sharjah was eventually cleared for development, only the broken down remains of the old fort eventually remaining. And then, wonder of wonders, it was renovated and turned into a delightful museum – which is well worth a visit, BTW.

The story of the Handley Page Heracles class biplanes, 38-seat luxury airliners decorated inside in mahogany and chintz (featuring, of course, a bar) that linked the world for the first time ever is a remarkable one that has long captivated me. It ended in tragedy when one of these great planes was lost en-route to Sharjah in the Indian Ocean, somewhere off the coast of Kalba, or perhaps in the Eastern Hajjar Mountains. Nobody is quite sure.

And that is where I end my tale. With a thought for the 228 people who didn’t make it to the runway this week, either, lost somewhere in an ocean. Where, nobody is quite sure...

UPDATE
With consummate cool, The National has posted the full copy of Air Outpost up on its website! You can find it here!

Gulf News. An Apology.

Image via Wikipedia

In its editorial today, Gulf News exhibits an amazing mixture of ignorance and arrogance. I'm really not sure which is greater.

The paper's rant, the second* most idiotic piece of editorial comment I can recall in 15 long years of regular GN readership**, asserts that French company Alstom is 'defying international law' - presumably because it is working with the Israeli government (GN's madcap scribble asserts 'by seeking financial gains at the expense of justice and peace') on the Jerusalem railway project.

The paper then goes on to say, of Alstom, 'It must reconsider its position, and so must regional states that deal with the French company.'

States like the UAE, for instance?

• The 2,000 megawatt $2 billion Fujeirah power plant contract awarded by the UAE in August 2007? Or the 16-year maintenance contract for that very same plant it signed in 2008?
  

• The February 2006 $250million Dubal power plant contract? Or the power plant and fume treatment contracts with Sohar Aluminium Company and ALBA (Aluminium Bahrain)?
  

• The August 2007 contract for a $175 million 150Megawatt co-generation plant at Dubai's aluminium smelter, DUBAL?
  

• The June 2008 award of a $500mn tram network in Dubai (together with consortium partners Besix and Serco)? The Al Sufouh tramway is apparently under construction.
  

In fact, the most cursory search of Gulf News' own website reveals a long history of huge contract awards to the company in the UAE and the wider Middle East, with key and strategic elements of transport, power, water and other public infrastructure being supplied and maintained by the company across the entire region.

So what's the answer here? Are we really being subjected to the ranting of simian, gibbering idiots - or is Gulf News knowingly misleading its readers as to the extensive and ongoing dealings which the UAE and other Middle East governments have with this major multinational company?

Does it owe its readers an apology for its ill-considered and badly researched coverage of this issue? Or an apology for being craven in its 'clarion call'?


* The most idiotic award still belongs to the holocaust denial piece, which seems to have been taken down from GN's website.

** Jeepers. That's over Dhs 16,000 at today's rates! I want a refund!