Amongst the many things spoken and written in the on-going furore about privacy injunctions, there have been some unlikely glimmers of hope for the future of the 'traditional' media outlets which are bound by them.
The fact that Twitter makes a mockery of such reporting restrictions should be an open goal for the new media evangelists who take any opportunity to imply that the microblogging site is rendering print and broadcast media equally obsolete. Yet there has been a twist to that particular narrative.
The oft overlooked issue of credibility in relation to 'news' emerging from social networking sites is finally being acknowledged, bringing some much needed balance to this related debate. Max Mosley, Max Clifford and Director of the Press Complaints Commission, Stephen Able, might seem strange bedfellows in any context - but they have all noted the greater weight attached to publication in traditional media. And little wonder.
The perceived freedom to publish and (maybe not) be damned raises questions about the provenance of any information revealed. After all, some tweets incorrectly identified certain individuals as having taken out injunctions. So what's the marker of credibility in the Twittersphere? Traction? It surely follows that the most trusted sources on Twitter are those individuals who are already affiliated to established newsgathering outlets - and are willing to put their name to a story and stand by it.
Mosley and Clifford (speaking to BBC Newsnight and BBC Radio Merseyside, respectively) both admitted as much, dismissing Twitter almost as an irrelevance when it comes to allegations from anonymous individuals. The PCC's Stephen Abel goes even further, stating "You may ignore a story on Twitter. It only really matters when it is published on a trusted site."
Interestingly, it seems many people not only ignored, but were completely bypassed, by much of the Twitter-gossip of recent months. In a recent edition of BBC2's Frank Skinner's Opinionated, recorded in mid-April, several weeks after the injunction speculation had begun to swirl, Chris Addison asked the audience if they were aware of the actor and footballer at the centre of the storm. Not a single person in the audience knew the (possible) identities of those involved. Admittedly, Skinner's target audience isn't as young as it was during his 1990s pomp, but it's fair to say they come from a media-savvy generation. Yet they had neither sought nor happened across the information that was available to them via Twitter.
Of course, issues of credibility matter slightly less when it comes to the superficial froth of celebrity gossip (not wishing to diminish the impact it could have on the wrongly accused). However, when it comes to hard news, credibility counts. And that's where the role of the journalist as assessor and arbiter comes into its own - no matter how deeply unfashionable that may be in the digital age.
Just before any like-minded flag-wavers for the "hierarchy of news" get too carried away, though, the Liverpool Wavertree MP, Luciana Berger, tried to rain our parade. Speaking to ITV Granada's regional political programme, Party People, she commented that she's aware of many people "who now get their news solely from Twitter." Now that's a thought that should really send a chill down the spine of journalists - more so than any superinjunction.
