I'm surprised that none of the reporting on this has mentioned the Kenyan use of Twitter to promote their military offensive in Somalia against al-Shabaab. That

I'm surprised that none of the reporting on this has mentioned the Kenyan use of Twitter to promote their military offensive in Somalia against al-Shabaab. That includes breaking the news first of the amphibious assault on Kismayu. Their spokesperson's handle is @MajorEChirchir. I think this might a good trend, despite the (in my view unnecessary) brashness, as both Hamas and the IDF employ spokespeople for the sole purpose of getting their version of the story out and I believe it's better to get that directly via Twitter and other communications mediums rather than through press conferences. As others pointed out, this also frees up journalists to spend more time doing actual investigate reporting and it changes the scope of a spokesperson's job from saying a lot of nothing to a room of journalists to making their country or organisation's case to the world at large.