Reporting on the China earthquake

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the China earthquake and the speed of coverage through Twitter and other online services. Robert Scoble seems to be crowing the most about how impressive this was. (Read his post here.)

Here's an example of his breathless excitement:

I reported the major quake to my followers on Twitter before the USGS Website had a report up and about an hour before CNN or major press started talking about it. Now there’s lots of info over on Google News.

How did I do that? Well, I was watching Twitter on Google Talk. Several people in China reported to me they felt the quake WHILE IT WAS GOING ON!!!

It's no doubt impressive live updates were coming out of China but to what end? Most of the "instant" news and feeds were either inaccurate or totally out of context. In fact, I found myself searching for news on the earthquake through the traditional media I follow - CNN and The New York Times. Sometimes news can be reported too fast.

John Murrell at SiliconValley.com's Good Morning Silicon Valley makes some good points. (Read full post here.)

An important tipping point in news dissemination during a disaster? In timeliness, maybe by increments over phones, blogs, text messages, e-mail, forum posts and the news wires (assuming that you’re an active Twitter user and happen to follow the right people). In reliability, certainly not. By any of the aforementioned means, initial information is going to be scattered, anecdotal and often flat-out wrong.

Twitter, and SMS, serve a great purpose in keeping people in touch and sharing information. But it doesn't mean the information is any more reliable.