This week, Gawker reported that CNN was caught regurgitating Twitter posts and attributing them to unnamed “sources” instead of citing where the quotes actually came from. Obviously another #CNNfail, as any reputable journalist should know to credit their sources when appropriate…

But the newest #CNNfail is NOT the topic of discussion today. I think they’ve gotten enough flack lately and frankly there are enough blog posts floating around about how much CNN sucks.

Which brings me to my question and the topic of today’s post: Is it ok to use tweets as legitimate news sources?

When Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died last week, Twitter was my primary source for late-breaking information, as I’m sure it was for many of you. However, after their deaths, a barrage of Twitter rumors surfaced – celebs like Harrison Ford, George Clooney, Natalie Portman and Britney Spears all fell victim to Twitter rumors. And don’t forget the rumors of tweets past: Patrick Swayze’s death and the Quizno’s “Two Girls, One Sub” video…both lies that spread around Twitter like wildfire.

So how do we know what information is true and which is not? If large news outlets like CNN are going to begin quoting tweets, how can we tell what news is actually legitimate? Where should the line be drawn? Should we just dismiss tweets altogether and seek “real” sources?

IMO, it’s all a matter of fact checking.

When it comes to the situation in Iran, for example, those tweets might be all we have to get a first-hand account of what’s happening. Plus, Twitter has played a major role here, so it is very appropriate to source tweets…as long as you do your fact checking first (and actually cite the source of course).

What do you think? Should news outlets like CNN use tweets as news sources?

By: Sasha Muradali, guest blogger

Last week a CNN headline read, “[Michael] Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him.” Google, Perez Hilton, CNN, Facebook, AOL and Twitter all experienced high volumes of traffic and immense lag time.

When was the last time you heard of AIM on the verge of crashing?

Lag time, for you non-so-net-savvy is the amount of time waited upon before something is discharged. For example, lag time on CNN would be how long it would take you to load an article in order to read it. Or in Gmail, this would be how long it took your e-mail to load or send an outgoing e-mail. In the case of Twitter, which is facilitated in real-time, a lag is how much time it takes for a ‘tweet’ to appear after it is originally submitted and appear in the search results, as well as, on the applications (iPhone, Blackberry, TweetDeck, TweetGrid etc.,)

Well, thanks to Michael Jackson, the Internet nearly broke last week. Literally.

I heard a few people talking about what effect the deaths of John F. Kennedy, Princess Diana and even the events of 9-11 would have had on the likes of Twitter and the Internet, had they been around in full-force back then and that got me thinking: what would have happened?

If Michael Jackson nearly broke the Internet, Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy would have surely killed it. We are talking about the woman who bought the world to its knees in mourning like nothing ever seen before or since. We are talking about the man who brought the American nation to a standstill.

And 9-11? Well, I think Twitter would have had to do more than just disable its ‘trending topics’ and ‘search’ in order to cope. With the need for information, like with #IranElection, 9-11 would have crashed the server.

What we saw with Michael Jackson, was a smidgen of what could have happened had the same luxuries been as freely available previously.

So what does this mean? Why all the hullabaloo over something so seemingly meaningless. Well, is it really meaningless?

The Internet isn’t a person, it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t feel. So why should you care?

You should care because that’s the speed of information and the progress of technology. This is the future of the world.

People want information, they want to know what is going on and they want to know now. They don’t want to know when CNN is ready to confirm it themselves, they don’t want to read about it tomorrow in the New York Times, and they aren’t ready to wait for the 6 p.m. newscast of the BBC.

It’s not just a fad and it’s not just going to go away.

This means that the Internet-types need to tighten their buckles and safeguard the world’s main channel for communication. This means that news sources like CNN, need to pay attention to the emergence of things like Twitter and Facebook (as they have already started doing – yes! #CNNwin). And this means that you as an individual, living on this planet, with these resources freely available to you, are challenged.

You are challenged to have knowledge, spread knowledge and create new knowledge.

It’s like Big Red said, in Bring it On, “This is your mission should you choose to accept it…and you better…or else you’re going to Hades.”

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Sasha Muradali runs the ‘Little Pink Book’. She holds a B.S. in Public Relations from the University of Florida (’07) and an M.A. in International Administration from the University of Miami (’08). She loves Twitter and all things social media, so you should find her @SashaHalima.