The Revolution Will Be Twittered

The article seems a bit hyper. "As the regime shut down other forms of communication, Twitter survived." - does Sullivan think Twitter has some uniquely resilient technology? Twitter will survive right until whoever's in charge takes the 10 seconds to put twitter.com into Iran's blocked sites list (or, you know, the next the fail whale)

Yes, there are rumors going around, but if you found the right users there were definitely people right there, standing on the streets. That strikes me as more credible than reporters which aren't necessarily getting the whole story, especially if foreign press is being asked to leave the country.

"Mackell says the crackdown on protests has also extended to journalists, making it almost impossible for the media to cover the story. "I saw yesterday a Japanese camera crew who have full government permission and were working with an approved government translator, still were beaten and arrested by the police for filming at a protest. That kind of thing is happening to a lot of people. Journalists are having their cameras taken." (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/14/world/main5087285....)

That's where Twitter -- as long as you're looking at people who are actually there -- comes in.

Christiane Amanpour asked M. Ahmedinejad if he would guarantee the safety of his rival. He said everyone is equal under the law, Mousavi would get a fine just like anyone else. Which is a strange answer to that question, almost like he was answering a different question. At any rate, CNN reported it as "Ahmedinejad declines to guarantee rival's safety".

Well, I speak a lot of languages, one of them is French. A while later I was bouncing around lemonde.fr and got to another version of the same exchange. Only this time the translations were audible. The translation for safety was strange, it was not safety, it was a phrase akin to 'safety from law'. Now my Farsi is terrible, so maybe 'safety' is always translated this way. I would need more info to know, just like you said.

It does leave me with troubling questions though. Why does CNN not air the translations? It's probably perfectly innocent because Christiane Amanpour looked confused as well. So I wonder, was the translator making translations that confused more than just me? Given the confusion evident in this whole exchange, why did CNN report it as it did?

I think this is a textbook case of what you are talking about. Because, for me, the '... cultural and language barriers...' are dulling my sense of deception. That said, I can tell that something is out of place with a lot of the reporting around this issue.