The recent reports of the death of Osama bin Laden have brought up some interesting remarks about the role that social media has begun to play in the journalistic sphere. In fact, Twitter became the kindling the lit the fire behind the news when tweets confirmed Osama’s death before the President of the United States (and even some news sources.) Many would have suspected that social media competes with traditional media, but that misrepresents what social media does for us. It presents a communication mill more so than any engine of actual journalism.

GigaOM has hooked onto the fact that while Twitter caught up in the feeding frenzy of Osama’s death, traditional media took a much more staid and careful approach before reporting on events; but once they started developing their stories, they adapted to what they saw going in tweets,

This is one of the best examples yet of how interconnected Twitter has become with the rest of what we think of as media. Even CNN, which initially refused to report any of the rumors that were flying through the Twittersphere — leading to considerable frustration on the part of many of those watching — wound up giving credit to social media when they finally confirmed their own sources were reporting that bin Laden was dead. In addition to Twitter, some said they first heard about bin Laden through Facebook, which was also awash in status updates about the news.

Looking at it as an ecosystem instead of a competition reinforces the point that all of these things feed into each other: TV reports are spread through Twitter; news that breaks on Twitter forms a part of TV and newspaper reports that try to summarize what has happened; and so on.

We could consider Twitter and Facebook to be more of a social unconscious. It’s a way that our highly wired civilization “thinks aloud.” CNN is right to wait on rumors boiling over on Twitter before reporting on them as anything more than that—we look to Twitter to serve our “information now-now-now” complexes, but it does little to deliver solid, founded information instead of the current popular thinking of the network.

In fact, we see this a lot when any celebrity death rumor hits the social networks. There’s a sudden flurry of Like’s and retweets and an outpouring of sorrow—only to be taken aback when the Wikipedia article isn’t updated with information on the dead celebrity and the traditional news media reports nothing. Except maybe a few articles appearing here and there in blogs about how Twitter set itself aflame as several thousand members absently, and automatically, retweeted the news without attempting to verify it.

Of course, what’s missed in this sort of recollection of events is that a large percentage of us do then start looking to verify the information by watching our traditional news sources.

Twitter and social media in general has become the smoke that leads us to the fire.

As with the announcement of the death of Osama bin Laden, Twitter only served to amplify interest in finding more news and directed more eyes to traditional news sources and the President’s speech. Twitter is more or less a global version of the neighborhood grape-vine where neighbors call each other on the phone to spread the news or says, “Turn on the TV!”

Traditional media should be slower than social media. We expect them to have their facts straight before they go to the presses or the airwaves. Journalists sit anxiously next to their phones as their contacts run down stories because when it comes down to the wire it’s a race between the risk of going forward with an unsubstantiated story and getting the glory with it turns out to be right or getting a huge back-eye in the view of the public when it’s bogus.

As an Internet goon, if I go out with a Tweet announcing something blatantly wrong but currently popular nobody will notice. I might get teased by my friends, but nobody cares. Now, if CNN comes out an announces something and its unsubstantiated and wrong we actually have a problem.

Twitter and Facebook get to whet our appetites by generating a buzz around potential news; but we’re still going to always have to rely on actual, thoughtful investigation by credible and ethical journalists to serve the main course.