The timeline is part of an ongoing project that will be updated.
2001
CNN was the first cable news channel to break news on the 9/11 terrorist attacks with anchor Carol Lin delivering the first public report. CNN starts a live broadcast about 3 minutes after the first tower is hit. CNN stays on the air for an uninterrupted 93 hours––the longest news event in history, almost doubling John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
© CNN
2005
Youtube launched into operation, ushering the public into an era of citizen journalism.
© Dado Ruvic / Reuters
2005
Andrew Breitbart founds Breitbart.com. The site grows to become the most popular right wing site in America, with 17 million users in 2017. It also becomes Donald Trump’s favorite news site and he hires Steve Bannon, Breitbart’s Executive Chairman, to run his presidential campaign. Breitbart News specializes in provocation, promotes a fierce populism, and is, some say, filled with racist and xenophobic material. Steve Bannon himself says, “We’re the platform for the alt-right,” a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites.(One headline reads: "Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?) The site also promotes material tied to the “Birther Movement.”
© C-Span
2006
Facebook launches "News Feed" feature on their site.
2008
Apple releases its first iPhone during Obama’s 2007 campaign. In 2008, Obama announces his vice presidential pick – Joe Biden – on Twitter, a two-year-old platform.
2008
Conspiracy theorist and right wing extremist Alex Jones launches his Infowars YouTube channel. In the next ten years, YouTube’s own algorithms will recommend Jones’ extremist videos to millions of users.
Jones will post 36,000 videos which will gather 2.4 million subscribers and more than 1.6 billion views. For the next decade on YouTube, aided by the algorithms, Jones will spread disinformation and false conspiracy theories that the government is behind the 9/11 attacks, the Sandy Hook School shooting, the Parkland School shooting and numerous other events and catastrophes.
The image on the left depicts Jones' account profile, which is banned in 2018 for violations.