Guardian-gate: Was it Twitter what won it…?

The Guardian’s victory in overcoming a gagging order is, in the words of editor Alan Rusbridger, a “great victory for free speech”. Rusbridger also lays much of the credit at the door of Twitter. And certainly anybody who has been on there today can’t have failed to notice the prominent discussion about oil company Trafigura or law firm Carter-Ruck.

But was it Twitter what won it (as the BBC is now pondering)?

In Rusbridger’s words again, the record will show Carter-Ruck “caved in” - I stress, his words not mine - it won’t state why.

It may be fair to speculate though that the exposure the Guardian engendered by lighting the blue touchpaper beneath the Twitterverse made defending the gagging order an exercise in futility. But was the rapid celebrity the story gained via Twitter decisive?

One Media Blog reader, Alex Clough, wrote in: “Knowledge of the Guardian’s gagging would have spread at a snail’s pace in comparison, that’s for sure. But I don’t think the number of people who knew about it has had an impact on the final outcome. The Guardian would have still threatened action in the High Court and… the outcome would have been the same regardless of Twitter’s existence. Only the rest of us wouldn’t have known until we actually read the newspaper the next morning.”

Word on the street is the Guardian was quietly confident of victory if it got its day in court. That may ultimately be more telling. But how many people would have read the story if it appeared in the Guardian without this fanfare? And hasn't Twitter opened up the story to a new audience?

That increased exposure may be something Carter-Ruck is now left to rue and certainly sounds a warning about the effect of social media and its resistance to tactics which once worked in the old world.

So whether Twitter won it or not - and I do suspect it's the latter - the microblogging phenomenon has undeniably elevated the story and shown why the media world is forever changed. But it also hints at a relationship between old and new media that can be one of powerful symbiosis rather than diametric opposition.

See also:

Twitter gagging to spill the beans on 'Guardian-gate'

Comments

[twitter.com/McKenzieRK]

Fantastic! It restores a sense of hope.

[twitter.com/markpack]

I think "Twitter or not" is a bit of a false question, as this was more a case of showing how online and offline can feed off each other to help bring about a result.

Twitter had two contributions - the short term one of passing news on quickly, which in turn generated other news that the mainstream media could report (even whilst they were still not reporting the original story) - and the long term one of showing how widely a story can spread, which will put off people trying for injunctions in some similar cases in the future