Any discussion about last week's Fort Hood massacre must inevitably begin with a blanket condemnation of the shootings and conveyance of sympathies for the victims and their loved ones. And so let me do so: the shootings at Fort Hood were unimaginably terrible, and my heart goes out, as do the hearts of millions, to the victims and their families and friends.

That's more than TechCrunch blogger Paul Carr was able to say in his blog post about Twitter and the Fort Hood shootings - he started off his post on the topic by discussing how smug he was about how the Fort Hood shootings had proven him right in his allegation that social networking has a negative effect on human decency. Which is interesting, considering that human decency is something that Carr himself doesn't do a particularly good job displaying.

Carr's post discussed the way that social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook have encouraged a rise in so-called "citizen journalism," meaning the reporting of events, usually in real-time, by normal everyday people. Anyone who was using Twitter during the Fort Hood shootings probably knows what he's talking about; much of the initial information about the event was disseminated via Twitter by people at the scenes of the shootings and in the hospitals where the victims were taken. Carr alleges that the effect of citizen journalism is one that leads to a loss of humanity, a loss of human decency, as people spend their efforts "reporting" on events, rather than taking part in them and trying to help.

Carr cites one specific example, a Twitter user who posted a (poorly framed) photograph of one of the victims being transported through the hospital. From the looks of it, the photograph looks to have been taken from the hospital waiting area. Carr lashes out at the Twitter user, claiming that she was too egotistical to bother trying to help, and instead only wanted to promote herself at the victim's expense. He compares it to saying, "Look at me, looking at him."

The problem is, Carr completely wrong about most of his allegations, and indeed, is guilty of the same egotism he accuses social networkers of displaying. With Carr, what his article boils down to is, "Look at me, looking at them, looking at him." He bashes the Twitter user for having a mobile phone in a hospital, which he claims "everyone" knows nobody should have (he's completely wrong - most doctors themselves now carry mobile phones, as the risk of them interfering with equipment is extremely minimal), he bashes the Twitter user for "not helping" (which, again, is completely wrong - in a hospital, the last thing doctors want is some citizen trying to help and getting in the way). In fact, he bashes the Twitter user for everything he possibly can, all the while claiming that the citizens should leave journalism to the "experts." He points out that much of the initial information about the Fort Hood shootings was incorrect, but ignores the fact that initial real-time reporting is almost always incorrect, even when performed by "the experts."

But what he really gets wrong is his treatment of #IranElection, the Twitter coverage of the disputed Iranian elections earlier this year. Carr claims that the citizen journalism performed during the unrest following those elections was pointless and misguided, fueled by egotism rather than a genuine desire to help. He compares the Fort Hood citizen journalists to the present at the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, whose death by gunfire was captured on camera by fellow spectators. Again, he lambastes the people doing the coverage, and goes so far as to say that Neda died alone, with no one helping her, while someone shoved a camera into her face - which apparently indicates that Carr himself didn't watch the video and didn't follow #IranElection on Twitter. In fact, the last thing Agha-Soltan saw were the faces of dozens of protesters attempting to help her, including at least one actual doctor attempting to save her life. Carr would apparently prefer that the cameraman during that incident had put down his camera, pushed the doctor aside and attempted to help himself.

Carr's column is designed to be inflammatory - I'm used to that, reading it frequently. In this case, however, he's gone beyond the pale, capitalizing on a human tragedy to say "See? Look at me. I told you so." It's egotism of the exact type he decries in his columns, and it's a perfect example of the lack of human decency he cites in social networking. Compared to the chilling attitude Carr's post takes, I'd prefer the warmth and humanity of Twitter any day - during the Fort Hood massacre, 95%+ of the tweets I received on the topic were expressions of concern and compassion for the victims - which is significantly more than Carr was able to muster up for the blog post he was paid to write.