Alister Cameron, a blogger and avid Twitter user in Melbourne, Australia, tweeted the following today:

1. 
   alicam Great quote from last week: “Will Iran’s election be for Twitter what the first Gulf War was for CNN?” 21 Jun 2009 from TweetDeck

He could be on to something.

If the Mumbai terrorist attack and Hudson plane crash were test runs, the Iran election is “it” for Twitter, a saga that has captivated the Twitterverse like no other to date. #IranElection remains a Top 10 Twitter Trend for the eighth straight day.

But media around the world aren’t just mentioning Twitter this time, they’re relying on it. It’s not the second day story, or the sidebar, Twitter is the story.

Due to tight restrictions placed on foreign journalists by the Iranian government and continuous SMS/phone network issues, reporters have few other places to look to find eyewitnesses on the ground. Twitter has proven to be the perfect medium to tell this story and its real-time shifts, and it’s brought people together across the globe in the process.

Thousands of #IranElection tweets are flowing every hour — 221,744 in one hour at its peak, according to Mashable. That’s a wealth of thoughts, comments, and information about the topic from all over the world, including, yes, from Iran itself.

Journalists can have a field day with Twitter in a situation like this, and they are. Outlets like CNN are including tweets in their actual reports.

But it’s not as easy as it sounds. The problem is there’s no filter. Yes, you can search #IranElection, or “#IranElection near:Tehran,” but there’s no way to search ‘verified tweets only’ or tweets that are 100 percent definitely from Iran.

There’s no easy way to decipher between rumor and truth.

From a journalist’s point of view, there’s a responsible way to use Twitter – and a lazy one. A good journalist will be able to play the vital role of gatekeeper, sift through countless tweets and be able to sort the credible from the ludicrous. The latter may be retweet-happy, and let others do the work.

Verifying a tweet is not easy to do. It takes time. It takes building relationships with sources on Twitter, just as you used to do on the phone or, hey, in person, remember that? It takes research. It takes a patient person, who searches any number of related keywords to trace a story lead and interacts with Twitter users directly through replies and direct messages. And a person who is willing to use Google and official Web sites to find more information.

Do all of that, and Twitter is a news source in itself. More than a tip service. A news source. With quotes. With pictures. With video. It’s just a matter of finding it all and making sense of the clutter.

That’s what the Iran election has shown. That’s what I’ve done with Breaking Tweets, spending hours mingling with sources in Iran and sifting through thousands of tweets the last eight days to post verified content. That’s why – yes – this could be Twitter’s Gulf War.