As thousands of Iranian protesters took to the streets in a historic protest of what now appears to be a stolen national election, the world turned to mainstream U.S. news sources seeking information. We were wholly let down.

CNN aired a Larry King interview with biker guys, and MSNBC ran prison documentaries. Fox was no better. As "America's most trusted news source" proved itself otherwise, the world turned to online networks like Twitter, Flickr and YouTube for stunning real-time, live reporting from people in the region.

The #iranelection tag became the top global trend on Twitter, as people followed and massively retweeted updates on the police/protestor clashes and passed on photos and cell-phone videos. A simultaneous backlash against US news networks, especially CNN, which once made its bones on Mideast coverage in the Gulf War. The #cnnfail tag became the third-ranking trend on Twitter.

The incident exposed more dramatically a trend we've been seeing for some time -- the primacy of Twitter in getting breaking news first and from primary sources. Here are a few examples:







US cable networks were, literally, asleep on this one. Their decisions to cut back on international staffing and on overall night and weekend news coverage really bit them here -- as a huge international story broke on a weekend night. More importantly, thousands of people realized their growing irrelevance.