The Tweet That Scooped the White House

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News of Osama bin Laden’s death again shows the reach and immediacy of social media

The media and public alike are still coming to terms with Monday’s announcement that Osama bin Laden – the world’s most-wanted man, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York – has been killed in Pakistan by US commandos.

Yet it’s not just the producers and consumers of news that were surprised by the timing and manner of the news breaking. The Obama administration, oft-lauded for its effective use of social media, seems to have been trumped in this instance.

A full hour before President Obama addressed the nation (and world) from the White House, the news was leaked via Twitter by Keith Urbahn. No, not the country music star who is married to ‘our Nic’ (although what a story that would have been) but the Chief of Staff of former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

‘So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn,’ Urbahn’s tweet, published at 10:25pm US Eastern Standard Time on Sunday evening, read. The official White House announcement by President Obama didn’t take place until 11:30pm.

Strategic tweeting reaps rewards?

As the Secretary of Defense during the September 11 attacks, Rumsfeld, perhaps more than any other American public figure, was charged with actioning the result we have just seen. No doubt the realisation that ‘his’ mission had been completed by a Democrat administration run by a Democrat would have chaffed somewhat.

While the Bush administration was ultimately unsuccessful in either locating or killing Osama bin Laden, the mind boggles at the amount of work and resources that were funnelled into finding him during its time in office. In the end, it’s difficult to say how much of that work paved the way for bin Laden’s death, 10 years after he achieved international infamy, but we’d hazard a guess that ol’ Donny felt a little like his homework had been stolen and someone else got all the credit.

So what’s the best way to undermine that credit (or at least steal a bit of thunder)? Have your Chief of Staff leak the information first, of course, cleverly referring to a ‘reputable person’ as the source of that info. And what better platform to spread the news than Twitter? The micro-blogging site has already proven its scoop-busting capabilities (consistently beating the mainstream media to the punch) that it’s tailor-made for this sort of gamesmanship.

Bin Laden’s death has achieved the highest-ever tweet rate – a staggering 3440 tweets a second! So if the leak was simply a petty scrambling for relevance and credit from a figure who was so emotionally invested in the operation, it clearly achieved that objective.

But perhaps it was more than that. With a presidential election due in 2012, could it have been a cunning move to remind the American public that the objective so vigorously pursued by the Republican Party has finally been achieved?

Whatever the motivation behind the tweet leak (tweak?), it has shown an interesting new area that politicians can utilise to one-up opponents. Could the tweet have forced the hand of the Obama administration? Did the President rush the announcement? While the 1400-word Obama statement will likely be the most quoted in news stories over the coming weeks, politicians the world over would do well to remember that a big ripple can be made in just 140 characters.

Image sources: The Telegraph & news.com.au

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