Twitter naturally "outperforms" all other agencies because it thrives on disaster and outrage porn. Of course you will encounter all kind of alarm bells because that is what gets retweeted. Constantly and year-round. A broken clock may be right twice a day.
>It continues to be a much better source of information than the vast majority of traditional media (and quite a bit better than WashPo IMO, lost a bit of respect for Cal on that one, still respect him a lot though)
I passionately disagree, Twitter is not a better source information. It is merely a firehose of information, which is largely low-grade, easily digestible news that is often incorrect or misrepresented. None of it is vital nor useful. This has nothing to do with following smartly it is about how the website is built. Even if you follow smartly, at best you get an unbiased news aggregator where you might as well go straight to the source. Twitter is instant gratification for news addicts. Everyone wants to be the town herald that gets there first.
Sources on Twitter are also biased, even more so. I rather trust processed and digested news than person X that said Y and shows some shaky video of Z. Best recent example of the disastrous consequences are the comments made by a German official in the Berlin senate (hardly an important position) who went on Twitter to complain about the US holding back masks. That turned out to be incorrect but spread like wildfire and caused an international incident. The "slow" news actually investigated and called him out on it but by then the damage had been done.