If the Washington Post didn't hear or see the tree fall, it still may have happened.

Remember the riddle: If a tree falls in the woods and no one was there to see or hear it, how do we know it really fell? The new answer is because of cell phone camera and Facebook and Twitter. Take the recent snow storm in Washington, DC was not only big news in the U.S., it made headlines in Europe. So did the Tweet-up Snow Ball fight with the gun toting off-duty officer. http://bit.ly/7Xz6kW

I saw it as a story and photo in a London newspaper. I was first struck by the fact that the Washington snowball fight was a web and Tweet-up public event. And I thought that 20 somethings didn't use Twitter. Not sure how many text messages played a part, but probably not very traditional land line calls were involved.

Fast forward to the snow ball fight and the off-duty officer didn’t like his Hummer being hit by snowballs. It wasn't a reporter from the Washington Post that saw him draw a weapon, it was a snowball revelers with cell phone cameras. http://bit.ly/7yiCSR

The cops issue the usual denials that he drew a gun. Not so, because photos and videos are on YouTube, blogs and pasted on a Facebook page and pretty soon the "traditional media" is picking it up. http://bit.ly/8ccFSh So, a London newspaper writes a story about a tweet-up and Facebook postings and calls it reporting.

Remember the more serious Virginia Tech shootings and the first videos on CNN were from a shakey cell phone. The early videos from demonstrations in Iran were from cell phones. The first information on the point is that in today's world every cell phone is a camera and every tweet could be global news.

Crisis communicators can't relax if an incident doesn't make it to traditional local news. Don't be paranoid, but monitor the news, Facebook, twitter and blogs.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

Think Before You Tweet

The good news about social media is that it expands our information sources. The bad news is that the lack of editing and filtering can cause repercussions.

Take for example, professional athletes, who have taken up blogging and tweeting. We now have insights into training camp, games and other aspects of the sports and are not beholden to sports writers, and electronic media coverage for all of our information.

Now let's drill down to Washington Redskins linebacker Robert Henson. He tweeted his reactions to being booed by the hometown fans, calling the Redskin faithful "dim wits".. He also tweeted: "The question is who are you to say you know what's best for the team and you work 9 to 5 at Mcdonalds." http://tinyurl.com/y9sb2pk

Now that's a sure way to go viral and the equivalent of a referee's whistle (dare we say "tweet") for a 15 yard social media penalty. In soccer, this might get at least a yellow card, maybe a red card.

Where are the sports agents and managers who work so hard to get the big contracts? The sports world believes in extensive practice to develop skills for maximum performance in a game. Why wouldn't athletes think and reflect for a second before tweeting.

There's more and more instant replay and review of sports - football, baseball, hockey, tennis, horse racing - all have ways to review a call and get it right.

Maybe athletes and celebrities should take a page from their own practice books and think before tweeting.