You can catch Swine Flu from Twitter

REMINDER: THESE ARE MARK'S VIEWS . NOT WAMU's, NOT AU's, NOT ANY OTHER 'U's VIEWS.

Washington's news-talk commercial radio station has an "Answer Desk" these days.

I was hoping they would get my mortgage refinanced, my kids admitted to the Beauvoir School and arrange a climatic change to the pattern of mid-Atlantic Spring tornadoes.

Sadly, they couldn't even answer the most fundamental of contemporary questions: "Can you catch swine flu from Twitter?".

It's a pressing concern, since so little is known about this mysterious, foreign virus, which according to the media was brought to our innocent shores via poor sanitation in both human and pig farming in less admirable countries. It's been pennies from heaven for the sick, desperate and destitute old media, already almost extinct from the "Arrogant and Out of Touch Virus", which has reared its head persistently in the U.S. since the days of the robber barons.

The most hyped-up story of the new century has also been perpetrated by the new wave of "social media", inspired here by America's neurotic obsession with Armageddon, as illustrated in such signature films as "Asteroid", "Independence Day" and - better still - the Rupert Murdoch-sponsored terror TV Show "24". Perhaps instead of a wine collection, Jack Bauer has a cellar-full of Tamiflu to save us from the ultimate nightmare.

But he will have to overcome the army of Tweeters pushing links (now called "Tinyurls" - you might have arrived here via one!) without checking the origin of the information, or the facts, to the latest hyped-up scare story. I took my daughter to a movie about solar flares at the National Air and Space Museum this afternoon. Believe me, it was every bit as scary as swine flu. But, somehow, I resisted the urge to Twitter.

This, you would think, would be an opportunity for "old media" to score, presenting themselves as the calm, trustworthy, factual stand-outs to reassure a nervous populace already reeling from the bailouts. An alternative business model to hyped-up sensationalism there, perhaps, but think again.

The local and network TV channels joined their cable subsidiaries in pushing the Armageddon theory, along with public radio and the major newspapers. The latter, at least, shouldn't need a reminder of their paltry coverage of the world-wide AIDS epidemic (deaths so far 32 million worldwide) or of the genocide in Rwanda (at least 800,000 dead).
Or of the opportunity to put such stories in context when a new strain of flu affects the developed nations.

But the news-bicycles are now ridden so fast that the chains have broken, and we're all left on our hands and knees on the cycle track, covered in WD40, searching for the chain-link that might provide the clue. Just like the kid in the playground who refuses to tell tales, there has still got to be a future for people who check before they tweet. In public media, our future credibility (and financial survival) depends on it.