From comedian Joan Rivers' Twitter feed (read from the bottom up if you can):

Fox says, for the record, that Rivers wasn't canceled due to the joke;  the show was overbooked, and she'll be rescheduled. As someone who has been booked--and then canceled--by Fox a couple of times, I'm skeptical of Fox's story here.

In the era of social media, the audience itself has a big say in how big the audience is. If you'd like FAIR's messages to reach more people, there's a number of simple things you can do to help.

1. Comment on the blog. A lively comment section draws readers to a blog. If you want an interesting conversation about media criticism, post the kinds of comments you think are interesting.

2. E-mail links to your friends. The simplest way to share content on the Internet--just copy and paste the url and send it to interested parties.

3. Post links on Facebook. Sharing sources of information with your friends is one of the key functions of the leading social networking site. If you click on the "Share" link at the bottom of each blog post, there's a Facebook button that should streamline the sharing process. But copying and pasting the link works just as well. Of course, if you and your friends are on other social networking sites, those can spread the word too.

4. Recommend us on bookmarking sites. One of the most helpful things you can do in terms of bringing new people to the blog is putting our posts on social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, reddit, Delicious and Digg. These are sites people go to to find and rank places they haven't been to before on the Web, and if a page does well there, it can attract thousands of new visitors. StumbleUpon seems to work best for us, but if there's one you're familiar with, that's probably the best one for you to use. The "Share" button will take you to a few of these sites--they generally require you to open an account with them to participate.

5. Blog about us. If you have a blog of your own, feel free to recommend our posts, expand upon our points or criticize our takes. In most cases, our blog will find your post and add a link to it to the comments section of ours. If that doesn't happen, please leave a url in the comments section. You can also include links to our posts in the comments sections of other blogs if we make an appropriate point.

6. Tweet about us. Aside from reviving the art of the aphorism, the main point of Twitter is to swap links people find interesting. Again, you have to set up an account to join in. To fit the link into the 140-character limit, you're probably going to want to use a link-shortener, like bit.ly or TinyURL. If you're already on Twitter, please follow FAIR at @FAIRmediawatch--most FAIR Blog posts get tweeted there, and you can retweet any that strike your fancy.

There are no doubt FAIR Blog readers who know things we don't about social media. If you have any further tips--for readers or for us--please leave them in comments.

Arianna Huffington's latest column (Huffington Post, 7/13/09) presents a compelling portrayal of the power of new democratic media--versus the self-preserving corporate model of news gathering--in the Chinese government response to major riots last week: "It choked off the Internet and mobile phone service, blocked Twitter and Fanfou (its Chinese equivalent), deleted updates and videos from social networking sites, and scrubbed search engines of links to coverage of the unrest." But here's the rub: "At the same time, it invited foreign journalists to take a tour of the area":

That's right, it slammed the door in the face of new media--and offered traditional reporters a front-row seat.

China's leaders realized that it's one thing to try to spin the on-the-ground views of bussed-in reporters ("To help foreign media to do more objective, fair and friendly reports," in the words of the government's PR agency), but quite another to try to spin the accounts and uploaded images of tens of thousands of Twittering and cell-phone camera-wielding citizens.

The Chinese have clearly learned the lessons of Iran.

As Huffington reminds us, "the truth is, you don't have to 'be there' to bear witness. And you can be there and fail to bear witness."

Driving home the point that "the conclusions drawn by eyewitnesses are greatly influenced by the eyes doing the witnessing," Huffington then excerpts one of the most damaging journalistic examples of this in our time:

Clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap, [a scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade] pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried. This reporter also accompanied MET Alpha on the search for him and was permitted to examine a letter written in Arabic that he slipped to American soldiers offering them information about the program and seeking their protection.

So wrote an embedded Judith Miller, "bearing witness" to the "silver bullet" proof of Iraqi WMD in the New York Times in April 2003.

Knowing how much "we reporters love a catch phrase," Iran writer Reese Erlich (ZNet, 6/28/09) wants you to know that, despite "Twitter being all a flutter in the west," current reporting is "highly misleading" in that "Iran is not undergoing a Twitter Revolution. The term simultaneously mischaracterizes and trivializes the important mass movement developing in Iran."

After tracing the concept's origins back to self-obsessed Western media--"desperate to find ways to show the large demonstrations...reporters were getting most of their information from Tweets and YouTube video clips"--Erlich gives us the reality of the situation:

First of all the vast majority of Iranians have no access to Twitter. While reporting in Tehran, I personally didn't encounter anyone who used it regularly. A relatively small number of young, economically well-off Iranians do use Twitter. A larger number have access to the Internet. However, in the beginning, most demonstrations were organized through word of mouth, mobile phone calls and text messaging.

But somehow "Text Messaging Revolution" doesn't have that modern, sexy ring, especially if you have to type it with your thumbs on a tiny keyboard.

More importantly, by focusing on the latest in Internet communications, cable TV networks intentionally or unintentionally characterize a genuine mass movement as something supported mainly by the Twittering classes.

In actuality, as "hundreds of thousands of Iranians poured into the streets in Tehran and cities around the country," they largely "organized silent marches through word of mouth and phone calls, since the government had shut down text messaging just prior to the election." Erlich makes clear it is important to understand that, "contrary to popular perception, these gatherings included women in chadors, workers and clerics--not just the Twittering classes."

Listen to FAIR's current radio program CounterSpin: "David Barsamian on Iran Upheaval" (6/26/09).