In the protests following Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‘s election last June, the media hailed Twitter a superhero. The social media tool became touted as a way for Iranians to communicate and organize. A Foreign Policy article published yesterday, however, argues that no such “Twitter revolution” occurred.

“Anonymous” won this year’s Polk Award for journalistic merit — for recording the death of Neda Agha-Soltan during the uprising in Iran last June over the contested elections. “Anonymous” shot the footage — and shared it with the world by uploading it to YouTube. “In a way,” says Polk curator John Darnton, it recognizes that “neutral platforms like YouTube and Facebook can actually disseminate news — news in the raw — in addition to just social networking.”

This time around the joke appears to be on Iran. According to a recap at The Atlantic, Charles Davis, a freelance journalist and blogger at the website Dissident Voice, penned a satirical, fake news piece yesterday titled “EXCLUSIVE: Obama Orders Air Strikes on Guantanamo Bay” which was subsequently picked up by Iran TV.

Today is a quiet day in the Twitter news cycle, with the Rose Bowl and the Outback Bowl and various other bowl games on TV along with hockey legends Bobby Orr and Bobby Clarke at the NHL Winter Classic, and reminiscences about #10yearsago and post-NYE nuggets about J.Lo and Kathy Griffin making the rounds. But [...]

“Readers keep emailing me to tell me that as far as cable news is concerned, today’s events might as well be happening on Mars. I cannot confirm this because when real news happens, the last place I look is the cable news channels. But I cannot say I am surprised. Since this does not have [...]

News of violent protests in Tehran, Iran have reignited the Twitter movement #iranelection, which many point to as a defining moment for the 140-character service during highly contested elections last summer. The New York Times is reporting that police opened fire on a crowd, killing at least four, on the anniversary of the death of “Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr.” Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog also has up-to-the-minute coverage.

Depending on whether you are more worried about Facebook, Russian hackers, or the U.S. government playing the role of Big Brother this will either come as reassuring news, or be just plain worrisome. President Obama has just named a new Cybersecurity Coordinator, or in the lingo of Glenn Beck, a Cyber Czar!

“Mainstream media have been accused of pathologizing the African-American male, but — let’s face it — three men who happened to be black moved a lot of units this year. Just try to imagine this past year in media without President Obama, Michael Jackson and Tiger Woods.” The NYT’s David Carr reflects on a year in media.

It’s nearly impossible to be surprised by political hypocrisy on any level these days, particularly when you are talking about iron-fisted rulers of countries like Iran. But still, this is sort of funny, in an Onion headline sort of way: Apparently, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran has a blog.

Back in June The Daily Show sent correspondent Jason Jones to Iran just ahead of the elections to film a series of “funny” spots about how the country was dealing with the election. One of Jones’ subjects happened to be Maziar Bahari, the Newsweek reporter who was shortly thereafter jailed and held captive for 188 days. Bahari was finally released last month. Was The Daily Show in part to blame for Bahari’s imprisonment?

We’ve mentioned a couple of times on this blog before the New York Times reporter Nazila Fathi, who during the protests over the Iran election this past June was often the only reporter on the ground reporting for the Times. Now she too has departed.

Want to know what it feels like, in the moment, to be a reporter on the ground in a war zone? ABC’s Jim Sciutto, who was one of the few Western reporters on the ground during the Iran protests, found himself under rocket fire during last night’s attacks in Kabul.

Complain all you want about Fox. Rage about the fact the White House has foolishly decided it’s a smart idea to return Fox coverage fire with (White House?) fire. At least we don’t live in Iran. Today the New York Times reports on what life is like now for journalists remaining in the country. One short word: brutal.

Remember the days when newspapers were able to break big stories? Actually, that day is today. Have you looked at the home page of the New York Times yet this morning? Wow. Apparently Iran has a secret nuclear plant and President Obama is planning to “accuse” them of lying about it sometime this morning. Read all about it!

It is a measure of the power the New York Times op-ed pages still possess — despite the financial struggles both the paper and the industry face — that Jon Meacham editor of Newsweek opted to take to them to advocate for the release of Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari.

At 5pm today President Obama will be meeting Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. Crowley for the much-hyped “Beer Summit.” But today also marks the 40 day anniversary of Neda’s death. Neda, you may recall, was the young Iranian woman who death during last month’s sweeping election protests was captured on video and watched around the world. Will today also mark Iran’s reemergence as a headline dominator? Or will beer and Birthers continue to rule the day?

Other than losing its dignity, TV has had a big win these past two weeks thanks to MJ’s untimely death. Know who else has benefited? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Remember the Iran election?

The recent kerfuffle between Nico Pitney (Huffington Post) and Dana Milbank (Washington Post) over a clumsy exchange in a White House press conference brings to mind two media mavens rarely mentioned in the same sentence: Marshall McLuhan and Thomas Jefferson. Seen in the context of their ideas about media and government, a tiff between a [...]

If only more news outlets would have listened to TMZ when they first broke the news. Michael Jackson coverage was plentiful at the end of last week, but was not enough to overtake the amount of Iran coverage, according to this week’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) report.

‘Watching The Lord of the Rings in Tehran‘ is the number three most read story on Time.com right now. As has been noted on Twitter the irony that the country is trying to distract its citizenry with an epic story (originally penned by a Brit, no less) about an unstoppable evil force ultimately overthrown by [...]

CNN and Fox News Channel spent a large portion of last weekend covering the crisis in Iran. Was it a response to #CNNfail, the Twitter uprising from the weekend before calling attention to a perceived lack of coverage? Either way, the ratings for last weekend proved one thing – viewers wanted the coverage.

The Daily Show sent correspondent Jason Jones to Iran for a series of tongue-in-cheek segments that aired last week and last night. Then, things got real. During last week’s segments, the “aged” feel was apparent, if not disclosed. But last night, the tone changed.

Yesterday’s Sunday New York Times featured two stories without bylines. One piece recounted Times reporter David Rohde‘s Saturday escape from Taliban captors following a seven month ordeal (and accompanying news blackout). The other piece was datelined Tehran.

While not exactly original, this week’s most popular headline was certainly on point: The revolution, aka the ongoing unrest in Iran over last week’s questionable election results, has been burning up Twitter with people inside and outside the country tweeting and retweeting in a constatly-updating sea of green.

As has been made clear here and elsewhere — most notably in the pages of the actual paper(!) — New York Times managing editor Bill Keller has in the last week unchained himself from his managerial desk duties at the Times building and reappeared smack in the middle of Iran’s (and possibly Twitter’s, depending whom you read) historic uprising. Some people seemed to find this disconcerting. Or perhaps it’s just sour grapes (does green with envy qualify as supporting Democracy in Iran?). Anyway, Keller has responded to the “bizarre vibes.”