It took about ten years, several military campaigns, thousands of American lives, and billions of dollars, but the United States finally completed the man hunt of Osama Bin Laden. Ten years ago when the 9/11 terror attacks happened, I saw it all being reported on television. That was how everyone found out about what was going on. Last Sunday though, it was different. My first hint that President Obama was going to be addressing the nation that night came from Twitter. People were tweeting big news to the public that normally wouldn't be known until television and other media outlets were covering it. By the time that the president came on TV to announce the death of Bin Laden, everyone already knew what was coming thanks to the fast-paced, well-connected world we live in today. I spent a good portion of time that night reading twitter feeds with all sorts of details coming out about the mission that located and killed arguably one of the most wanted men in our nation's history. It was like watching the news happen right in front of my very own eyes. There was one Twitter user from Abbottabad that accidentally ended up tweeting the entire assault on Bin Laden's compound. He started by complaining about helicopters flying over his house, but as he kept tweeting they became more and more like reporting and before he knew it he had tons of people following him with reporters from every news agency requesting interviews. This is just another example of how new media is overtaking traditional outlets for breaking news coverage.
However, traditional media adds depth that Twitter and other new medias cannot. This article from the The New York Times gives an in-depth look into the mission to hunt down Bin Laden through work done by CIA operatives on the ground in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. When I had first heard the news I thought to myself we will never know what happened until years down the line. Boy, was I wrong. The traditional news outlets have served the public everything they could possibly want to know aside from the names of the members of the top-secret SEAL Team on the assault mission and Bin Laden's body on a platter. Both of these details are understood to be best kept secret and away from the public eye though. The New York Times article is a perfect example of hard news reporting. All the facts are laid on the table, barely 24 hours after the incident happened. The article pieces together different bits and pieces of interrogation, surveillance, and espionage that all lead up the helicopter assault on Osama Bin Laden's compound that happened to be in plain site. I would say that both traditional and new media outlets served their purpose during this massive news event. the Internet gave immediate response, while traditional outlets took time to grasp the story and lay it all out for America to fully understand what happened.
P.S.
There was a picture floating around the Internet of a picture of an apparently dead Osama Bin Laden. It is a fake although many have been duped by it, including White House officials. Just another example of how the Internet and new media are not always correct and reliable.
