Twitterpretation

The George Zimmerman trial is going very poorly for George Zimmerman.  All of the facts being presented by the prosecuting attorney are hitting home, the medical records are tearing his version of events to shreds, and his family is falling apart.
I know this because Twitter tells me so.  Mostly from my Twitter-friends Indigo and Rima Regas, die-hard liberals who have been reporting the trial.  The only news I’ve witnessed on Zimmerman’s trial that did not come through Twitter was The Daily Show’s rendition of Zimmerman’s lawyer’s ill-fated knock knock joke.
So of course my view is skewed.  How could it not be?  Doubtlessly, in some other parallel Twitterverse, there is a conservative dude getting updates on how the black people in Florida are ready to riot should this go poorly, that Zimmerman’s defense is shredding the prosecution, that Trayvon is now proven to be a bloodthirsty maniac.
That’s the joy of Twitter, really; seeing the flow in real-time.  You get a sense of history unfolding as it goes; I remember staying up late into the night watching the Texas filibuster, having watched the live feed for all of two minutes before realizing the Twitterverse was giving me a far more entertaining and informative look at it – people citing Robert’s Rules of Order, giving witty quips, noting the historical precedents.  It was like footnoted history, a brilliance of communication.  Those who told me, “Oh, Twitter could never replace news!” overlooked the fact that CNN wasn’t covering this shit and my Twitter was a wealth of information.
But it’s also skewed.  How is Zimmerman faring?  I have no idea.  I know it seems to be going poorly to people who want Zimmerman to go down in flames, which is based somewhat in reality as they keep linking to sites I deem trustworthy, but… is that reality, or wishful interpretation?  No clue.  Certainly a lot of the people who witnessed the filibuster seemed to think it a triumph, which it was in a sense, but it’s not like Rick Perry won’t try to sneak in again through the back door.
Twitter is a fantastic tool.  But unlike the news networks, which are covertly biased, my Twitter-feed is overtly biased.  I know somewhere there’s a truth, but Twitter as a newsfeed is more of a Roger Ebert review of a movie than the movie: I know it’s got leanings, and I have to account for them.
That makes it no less worthy, though.