By now just about everyone has heard the story of the “Bush shoe thrower” – the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush, and called him a “dog”, while Bush was talking at a press conference in Baghdad. Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw both his shoes and the epithet at Bush before denouncing him as having brought death and sorrow to Iraq as a result of six years of war.
What is amazing about this story – among other things – is how quickly that incident made it around the world. Sure, it was covered on television news (in fact, it occurred on television, as the press conference was televised). And of course it was covered in the newspapers.
But where it really buzzed was on the Internet. In fact, in the 48 hours since the shoes were thrown, more than 1200 videos relating to the incident are up on YouTube, and most of those are videos of the actual incident.
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Prefer still images? There are more than 150,000 of them online.
Because of this blitz of Internet media coverage, while Muntadhar al-Zaidi may not be a household name around the world, awareness of his deed has made it to all corners. And, as a direct result, protests have been mounted from all directions, which also are being ricocheted around the Internet.
So what is our point here?
It is that the Internet, for better or worse, has not only changed the way that we get our news, but, indeed, it magnifies, reflects, and influences the news of the day.
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