They were showing foreign correspondent Tim Marshall’s Twitter feed alongside the live coverage of the Inquiry. At this particular point in time, Sir John Scarlett was being asked about the intelligence dossier prepared by the Joint Intelligence Committee on Iraq’s WMD programme.

Marshall was reporting what Scarlett was saying and providing his own commentary on Scarlett’s answers. He was careful to distinguish between the two.

Occasionally, I wondered whether Marshall wouldn’t have been better employed as part of the Inquiry or what would have happened if some of his tweets could have been streamed onto a wall behind the heads of Chilcott’s team. Might have spiced things up a bit.

In (the gaping chasm) between these thoughts, I saved a few screenshots:  

Of course, the tweets were also appearing on Tim Marshall’s Twitter page and it seems they were being fed into a live blog page a little bit like this one.

It was certainly an interesting experiment.

As somebody who joined mid-stream (as it were) I was struck that I would have been pretty confused if I did not know that ITwitius was Tim Marshall’s Twitter account. This perhaps states a case for some kind of ‘official blatantly obvious Twitter account’ for this purpose like @SkyForeignCorrespondent (OK, bit long but you get the picture). Even @TimMarshall might have helped.

But you could also get round the problem by having a box on screen that tells you that information – as it was there was no explanation of who was writing these updates. I can imagine some people wondering what on earth ITwitius was or is. (I assume somebody did explain this at the beginning but like I say not all your viewers are joining at the beginning).

Obviously, this soon became clear when Sky went back to the studio for a two-way with Marshall where he gave his thoughts on Scarlett’s evidence mentioning his own Twitter commentary.

This aspect was interesting in itself. Of course, Marshall’s Twitter updates were essentially his notes divided up into 140 character segments. At one point, Marshall referred to them to remind himself of an extra point he wanted to make.  Where previously these would have been written on a piece of paper, here they became part of Sky’s journalistic content as well.

I suppose this is what people mean when they talk about transparency in journalism…

Other Twitter ventures on the Iraq Inquiry

IraqInquiryBlog – Run by the Channel 4 news team. Regularly overtweeting and having to beg for a fresh allowance of Twitter updates from the 140 character messaging gods.

IraqInquirydgst – Run by the Iraq Inquiry Digest, under the leadership of Chris Ames.

I’m currently waiting for 2,383 queued tweets on a #G20 search of Twitterfall (and later I realised that I need to keep it ticking over at 4 tweets per second to keep the queue down). I hardly need to say you can also track #G20 here and here.

Twitter has been comprehensively integrated into mainstream media coverage.* Here’s an inevitably incomplete run down of how Twitter has been used to tell the story. 

1. Twitter and Liveblogging

Sky News and The Times are both using CoverItLive. Sky have added reporters’ pictures which is a nice touch. They have decided to disable comments, whereas the Times is frantically trying to publish them all.

The Times admitted they were struggling to keep up:

Joanna Geary:  Sorry Dozi, we’ve had a sudden surge of comments coming through. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to publish them all. I will try my best.

Joanna Geary:  No censorship going on here guys. Just one comments editor trying to keep pace with all your great comments! The only comments that might be rejected are those that would be offensive (swear words) and those that break the law (defamation, incitement to violence).

UPDATE 4.10pm:

There were also difficulties with mobile phone batteries:

Joanna Geary:  It is true that a couple of our reporters have run out of battery on their phone (they have been reporting since 9am. We do have others still in the field and some filing stories in the office. I will be linking as soon as they have finished.

The Guardian has a liveblog including embedded audio and video. They have a separate page for Twitter updates from their reporters. Matthew Weaver is using audioboo.fm to provide audio snippets. UPDATE: And here’s the Guardian’s Google map.

The BBC continues with the live text commentary approach that they’ve used for past events such as the attacks on Mumbai. They’ve also produced an interactive map.

UPDATE: The Financial Times has a dedicated G20 Twitter account.

But not everybody’s impressed with Twitter’s extensive use.

"@chilesl: anyone else finding the Guardian’s #g20 ‘reporting’ via #twitter distinictly annoying? http://tinyurl.com/d5x663"

2. Twitter sources

Journalists are now well aware, or should be well aware, of how to use Twitter to provide information and eyewitness accounts to enhance their coverage of events. Here’s the work of BBC News Online journalist, Ana Lucía González, which includes numerous shout outs for interviews and information like this one:

"@unslugged Hi from BBC, we would like to quote your tweets on our website, is this OK? We’d also like to speak to u. Pls DM me. Thank you!"

@unslugged later apears in the BBC’s live text commentary:

"Unslugged tweets: It’s like Tiananmen Square out there. Except the rioters brought their own tank. Read Unslugged’s tweets."

3. Twitpic Fail

Twitpic went down some time in the afternoon (reported by Sky News liveblog at 2.10pm), presumably due to the sheer volume of photos being uploaded. It does seem to have recovered at around 3pm. New competitor Tweetphoto was only too happy to point out its temporary demise.

UPDATE: More on a similar theme by Kate Day at the Telegraph.

*Today, this newspaper apparently converted it’s whole operation to Twitter-style updates from staff and trusted communities.