Computer Support Blog

For several months, the Occupy Wall Street Movement has been going on in New York City.  The protest, currently physically clogging up New York City’s Zuccotti Park, seeks to bring attention to how the 1% of the wealthiest people control the fates of the remaining 99% of the population.  There is a strange disconnect in the literature provided by Occupy Wall Street through their website and the physical protest; it is unclear how the protesters hope to bring change to economic inequality through randomly clogging up a park near the Wall Street financial buildings.

What is fascinating is how every sector of the media is trying to make a statement about Occupy Wall Street.  On November 15, the Wall Street Journal posted a video online in which three reporter/commentators discussed a spike in Twitter activity the night before.  Twitter has been an invaluable tool used by members of Occupy Wall Street to communicate with one another through their smartphones.  The story focused on how Twitter traffic quintupled from about 100,000 tweets with Occupy Wall Street hash tags to 500,000.  This occurred when police came into the park in the middle of the night to clean.

The attention social networking media gets through stories like this is enough to make legitimate journalists and private citizens blanch.  A quick Google search of November 15 and Occupy Wall Street leads readers to surprisingly little information.  Legitimate news sites note that an eviction happened and that authorities allowed protesters back into the park by morning.  In a protest that has had moments when the major news outlets have covered police violence and significant crowd actions, a spike in Twitter traffic pertaining to Occupy Wall Street seems like a non-story.

The Wall Street Journal tacitly admits as much in the podcast when Zachary Seward notes that much of the traffic that contributed to the Twitter spike did not come from people actually in Zuccotti Park.  This is a textbook definition of hearsay and is more an illustration of how fast small events can be blown out of proportion.  When the Wall Street Journal treated what was essentially a high-tech game of “Telephone” as a legitimate news story, Edward R. Murrow rolled over in his grave.

Twitter could be a great asset to the media or to Occupy Wall Street, but the way people who are not involved in stories use Twitter to relay messages as if they were present sets a dangerous standard that journalists today, at the very least at the Wall Street Journal, seem content to follow.  The non-story from the Wall Street Journal calls to mind a brilliant parody done by The Onion News Network about assumed casualties from a train wreck.  At least viewers for The Onion know to expect humor as opposed to serious stories; we expect better from The Wall Street Journal.

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