Twitter, #IranElection – The Future of News Media?

According to a recent Mashable post, the U.S. Government asked Twitter to stay up during the #IranElection Crisis.  Here’s a direct quote from the post:

The biggest revelation is that the State Department asked Twitter not to go down at its original time last night in order to allow Iranians to tweet out what’s happening in their cities. It also seems that U.S. officials are watching the chatter on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook (), and elsewhere to keep up-to-speed with the situation on the ground. Social media communication is even more important, since the U.S. has no embassy or official relationship with Iran.

OK, so if this is true, it definitely says a lot about the current state of our media and government. According to the State of the News Media, one of the major trends in news media in 2009 is the shift away from Journalistic institutions toward the individual journalist. In addition, according to ReadWriteWeb, one of the 2009 Web Trends is real-time news feed (ie. Twitter, in this case).

Twitter is information that’s released in real-time. Everyday people have their own voices now, from country to country, faster than our government or our media outlets can keep up. I see some great pros to this but also some extreme cons. Obvious pro is how cool it is – everyone can have a voice and keep abreast of International affairs – obvious cons is that of credibility – how are we to know what we are reading is true? Here’s a statement from TomsTechBlog -

Anyone saying Twitter has been a source of news during this is lying or being deceived.  Twitter is blocked in Iran (see comment by Michael C. Hough), Cell service including SMS is shut down and Satellite dishes are banned so no Satellite Internet.  People want to believe Twitter is a great news source so they’re ignoring the facts.  In reality it was almost impossible to get accurate info out of Iran yesterday (which was of course the point)

So what do you think? Do you think that social networks and real-time feeds are taking the place of news media, or at least assisting in the distribution of news? Is this credible, and what do you think is the future of news media?