The story of Life on Mars was used to demonstrate the power of the
Internet as a source of news and comment.
Newsgroups began to carry the story as they heard of events from
broadcasters, and early copies of the NASA press release, and details of
the next day’s press conference began to circulate.
CNN and the NASA site were unavailable until the afternoon of 7 August.
Science magazine site had no news. Planet News carried a good summary,
while the news services of the major search engines - Infoseek and
Excite - provided summaries from Reuters New Media. The Electronic
Telegraph provided good links to pictures and background information and
had the best coverage out of the Web press sites.
The best site was the Federation of American Scientists which carried
early news, informative links and was constantly updated. Compiler John
Pike, professed himself pleased with its demonstration of the Web’s
potential for rapid reaction issue management.
Evaluation and analysis by Carma International. Web monitoring by The
Broadcast Monitoring Company. ‘What The Papers Say’ can also be found
at: http//www.carma.com/carma
