The media has won its war on pushing the narrative that social media was responsible for the toppling of the 30 year rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.

“It was a long, tough battle,” said an anonymous source with a large news organization, “but we think we were finally able to sell this idea of the power of Facebook to the public. Even though less than 20% of Egypt has internet access, we’ve been able to promote the incredible power of social media. This is very important to new organizations like ours because more and more we want to rely on the public for our news-gathering, reporting and opinion pieces. Crowdsourcing is simply a much more affordable way for us to run our news operations. We’re using a lot more social commentary for our content for one simple reason: Joe six-pack and Jane goatskin-of-Boone’s-Farm-wine work a lot cheaper than expensive liberal arts-educated journalists with their fancy cargo pants and no-iron shirts.”

While the news organization official admits that poverty, oppression and high unemployment were factors in the Egyptian revolution, those age-old societal problems did not fit with the ‘21st century social media-as-the-new-power‘ narrative being promoted by major news outlets.

“Look– hunger, poverty, oppressive government and hopelessness are timeless sparks to incite revolution. They’re like the greatest hits of revolt in history, but there’s no news angle there. We needed some pazazz! Now, you add in the influence of Facebook, and well, sir, you’ve got yourself a bonfire of news appeal because everyone’s on Facebook and they want to feel good about the fact they spend countless hours every day posting pictures of kittens or kids or love poems to their morning coffee. Hey, we all want to believe that the same tool that helps us share cute moments of life can be used to “LIKE” a revolution and topple a corrupt leader! That’s the power of the social network and a successful news narrative that drives down operating costs. “