Host Jon Stewart  mocked the cable news network for its self-congratulatory "We're passing along unverified information -- which we normally would never, ever do!" tone and joked that CNN was "getting news on the possible Iranian revolution ... and also reconnecting with high school friends."

Garber writes that Stewart "fashioned himself as the crotchety Luddite who opposes new media platforms not on their merits, but because they're new. As someone who failed to account for Iran's exceedingly challenging reportorial context in his broad criticism of CNN."

I didn't see Stewart's criticism that way, though I did see it as shooting fish in a barrel, mocking as awkward CNN's obviously awkward use of Twitter. 

As I noted the other day, I think it's CNN that looks crotchety whenever it tries to drag new media, kicking and screaming, onto the TV air. When TV anchors are reading blog comments or tweets off of a giant computer monitor in a TV studio, it's magnificently bad television.

CNN's approach is all wrong on this. Obviously Twitter and other forms of new media are part of the journalism landscape these days, but that doesn't mean CNN has to put Twitter on TV any more than it has to put TV stories on Twitter.

The great thing about having all these different tools to communicate with is that you can use the strengths of each of them to communicate more effectively. Mashing them all together doesn't necessarily add anything. CNN should be -- and is -- a presence on Twitter, and on TV. But reading tweets on TV is just lazy. It's the network saying, "Hey, look, we're with it!" when it should be asking, "Does reading tweets on the air actually add anything to our TV broadcast?"

There are a lot of ways a news organization gathers information. With the Iran elections story, Twitter, for all its dangers and pitfalls, has emerged as the leading method. CNN's TV arm should take that information and make television out of it. We don't need to see the tweets on the TV. It looks ridiculous, and, you know, we have Twitter for that.