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Foreign Media Banned in Iran so Twitter and YouTube Rock On

By David Weir

Updated on: June 16, 2009 / 11:57 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

News coverage of the situation in Tehran and other Iranian cities today has reverted back to the early stages of the rebellion last Saturday, i.e., once again we have to get most of our news from social media. The reason is that the Iranian government has today banned foreign media from covering the demonstrations.

The outpouring of coverage via social media continues unabated. Today, for example, hundreds of more videos from inside Iran have been uploaded to YouTube. Twitter is also awash with reports, also, but some of them seem based only on unsubstantiated rumors, such as a series of frantic RTs indicating that the Iranian Army may be moving in on demonstrators.

Other Tweets seem more grounded in the kind of eyewitness reports that have largely characterized the stream of reports that have been coming out of Iran since this rebellion began:

TwitPersia in tehran anti election fraud rally in Naft St and Jahan Koodak! Join them! #iranelection iranians mousavi karoubi less than 10 seconds ago from web
RT IRAN student (Mazandaran Uni): "We R abt 1200 uni student locked in uni by ahmadi's Militia. We need help." #IranElection #gr88 half a minute ago from web
RT @persiankiwi: we have info that tehran uni will be attacked tonight - have contact inside - says uni blocked #Iranelection Hope Not :( half a minute ago from TwitterFon

The self-policing Twitter community is busily trying to sort rumor out from fact, and warning users to protect the identities of Iranian posters from discovery by the authorities -- although, given the open UI of the micro-blogging service, and the use of multiple IDs and proxy servers by protesters, this concern is probably misdirected.

Meanwhile, the anchors at CNN over the past 24 hours seem to be going out of their way to pat themselves on the back for what they claim has been 24-7 coverage of events in Iran since the election. This is not true, however. On Saturday, as protests were erupting, CNN was focused stateside on the transition to DTV.

Now the foreign networks are in place and ready to film, the regime is preventing them from doing so. So at present it's up to social media services to get the news out to the outside world. One complicating factor: Twitter plans a one-hour shutdown for maintenance at 2 p.m. PDT today.