Who or what is the most trusted source of news in this era of the real-time web?  Over at Techcrunch, MG Siegler suggested that  In The Age of Realtime, Twitter is Walter Cronkite, drawing the obvious parallel between the most revered television news anchor of the 20th century and the increasingly popular source of breaking news on the Web.  MG is a recognized authority on Twitter, and writes frequently about the service, so his words carry a lot of weight.  I’m not saying he’s completely wrong.  He’s largely correct in his assessment of the increasingly important role of the real-time Web as a primary source of news.  But there’s definitely a problem with his analogy.

MG writes:

For much of this argument, I’m just using “Twitter” the way my colleague Steve Gillmor uses it, which is to say, as a word not tied to one brand but meaning the “realtime web.” It doesn’t matter what method we use for this realtime information dissemination, what matters is that it is happening. And this is the future.

It’s certainly true that Twitter is getting a lot of the big stories faster that the big TV networks and newspapers are choosing to break them.

MG lists some of the recent high profile news stories that broke on Twitter faster than the mainstream media:

Earthquakes, the massive San Diego fires, the shootings in Mumbai, the situation in Iran, and even Michael Jackson’s death. The realtime web beat the mainstream media easily to each of these stories. And this disparity will only increase going forward.

No dispute here with these points; the real-time web has a very good speed and accuracy streak on these stories vs. the mainstream media.

We’re entering a new age of realtime information. Some people don’t like that because they fear inaccurate reports. They’ll cite the Balloon Boy example as how things get out of control on services like Twitter. Well you know where the Balloon Boy reports were way more out of control? On CNN and the other cable news channels. And you know where I first heard sound arguments that there is no way that balloon could hold a full-grown child? Twitter.

MG compares how Twitter provides reports that are occasionally missing or inaccurate at first, then corrected over time to the initial reports of the JFK assassination provided by Walter Cronkite at CBS:

Some will say they don’t mind waiting an extra hour to get just the facts. That’s fine. But that’s not really true. It may be true for a relatively small incident like a minor car crash, but imagine if a national (or worldwide) catastrophe happened. Do you honestly believe that any one of those people would be content to sit back and wait for the 100% fact-checked version of the story? No. Not one of them would.

The same was true back in 1963. […] You’ll notice he says things like, “their [the President and Texas Governor Connally] condition is as yet unknown.” The report than switches over to KLRD in Texas where they note, “as you can imagine, there are many stories that are coming in now as to the actual condition of the President. One is that he is dead.” That was not known as the time, and was not known until much later in the broadcast.

Did anyone care that they were stating unconfirmed things on the air? No. In fact, had they not, everyone would have turned to another channel. The point is that people want this information. Should a disclaimer be included that it’s just a report or unconfirmed? Of course, but it was today, just as it was back in 1963.

However, the mechanics of the whole thing are much different on the real-time web.  And this is a challenge (or opportunity) in finding a way to develop that trusted icon that the CBS news enjoyed for decades.

The mainstream media may have been slower, but it had (and still has, to a certain extent) one major advantage over the real-time web:  a single voice to anchor our attention..

When the people of the USA wanted to get their timely news (the original real-time news), they chose radio or they chose television.  They had three major TV networks to choose from, but in that era the most trusted resource was CBS and the focal point was Walter Cronkite.  However, and this is not to denigrate Mr. Cronkite one iota, he was the face of a much larger news organization.  He literally was “the anchor”:  the point towards which the viewer’s attention was focused.  Behind him, though, was a group of hard-working news professionals, who investigated, read, listened, amalgamated, summarized, and provided the core news product to be delivered back to the news viewer.

There is no Walter Cronkite on Twitter, of Twitter, or for Twitter.  But there may be a number of semi-Cronkites who command a fraction of the potential Twitter audience.

There’s the big difference in how Twitter works vs. the 1963 news media.  You had limited trusted sources in those days, each with their own portal (TV or radio station) where you tuned in to hear the anchor, the “trusted voice”, to hear about the pre-filtered important news.  Cronkite and CBS News stand out over time because of their excellent reporting of some of the key events of the pre-Web era.

Today, you have much more choice as to who is your “trusted voice”.  But if you use Twitter as your own real-time news source, you have to navigate through the river of Tweets, news, etc. to find what you need.  There’s plenty of ways to filter through the streams of data and focus on what you want:  that’s not the issue.  The issue is that Twitter is still, even when filtered, a faceless gestalt of voices which don’t speak in unison.  If anything, Twitter is closer to CNN than to CBS because of its 24/7 information streaming, but it’s closer still to public-access television or radio where a very diverse mix of programming lives.  In that environment, it’s hard to get a unanimously recognized trusted voice because Twitter is extremely versatile in its simplicity.  There are many ways to consume information via Twitter and the rest of the real-time web, so savvy users focus on what they want and less educated (or devoted) users pick up what they can out of their streams.

It’s one thing to get your news from Cronkite’s trusted voice:  “if Cronkite reports it, that’s the way it is”.  “That’s the way it is” is an easily understood rule, especially when it’s associated with Cronkite’s trusted voice.  There is no universally accepted voice on Twitter; it’s the gestalt converging around information in an offshoot of the “wisdom of crowds” concept.

MG is right:  there’s no doubt that the real-time web is faster and it’s starting to scoop mainstream media on a regular basis… for those people who rely on the real-time web for their news.  Within a decade, that will probably be the case for the vast majority of the world.  But until the authoritative, trusted voices arise on the real-time web, Twitter ain’t no Walter Cronkite.  And, for better or worse, THAT’S the way it is.

[Editor’s Note: Mark Dykeman can be found writing regularly over at Broadcasting Brain. –spa]