When the Border Force says it will do something outside the law, and the Minister responsible won't comment, it's a special breed of journalist which calls the resulting furore an over-reaction, writes Greg Jericho.

Any government or media organisation that ignores the power and reach of social media does so at its peril, as the immediate and furious response to a planned Australian Border Force operation in the Melbourne CBD underlined.

I may have written the book on social media and political journalism in Australia, but I'm not a social media evangelist. I think it both gets both over-praised and over-criticised.

It is neither the saviour of democracy throughout the world, nor the cesspit of humanity.

But last Friday we saw the power of social media, even while tired members of the traditional media shouted as loudly as they could that it was all irrelevant.

On Friday morning around 10:15am, the Australian Border Force issued a media release regarding "Operation Fortitude", a joint exercise with Victoria Police which would target crime in the Melbourne CBD that Friday and Saturday night.

The media release quickly found its way onto social media courtesy of the Political Alert account and Buzzfeed Australia's political editor Mark di Stefano.

From there it caught fire across Twitter and Facebook, which is generally not a thing you want your government media release to do.

The reason for the furore was that the release quoted the ABF's Regional Commander of Victoria and Tasmania, Don Smith, saying that "ABF officers will be positioned at various locations around the CBD speaking with any individual we cross paths with".

Mr Smith continued to say, "You need to be aware of the conditions of your visa; if you commit visa fraud you should know it's only a matter of time before you're caught out."

Would the ABF be asking everyone they came across to show them their papers? Twitter was inundated with people sharing their human rights concerns as well as their jokes about the operation.

Within a few hours, a rally had been organised in the Melbourne CBD. Such was the turnout that not only was a press conference about the operation set for 2pm cancelled, but so too was the entire operation as Victoria Police quickly realised the ABF had dropped them in a large pile of manure.

But for some members of the media, this was all a beat-up.

For them, the media release was - to use ABF's commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg's words - just "clumsily worded", and that was the end of it.

Chief among those holding such a view was the jejune (to use his favourite word) commentator from The Australian and Sky News, Chris Kenny.

Kenny used his various media platforms to argue the problem was just that "the Australian Border Force issued a silly press release", and to say otherwise would be an over-reaction.

At this point, we should recall that the ABF is a paramilitary organisation, which has been created by this government with extensive powers including access without warrant to everyone's metadata. So it issuing a "silly press release" is worrying enough on its own.

But it was not just silly.

Kenny pondered in his column why the ABC (a Kenny column seemingly must always attack the ABC somehow) "never bothered to present the obvious questions about whether such checks would be legal, how they could be justified or why they would be conducted - presumably because the answers would have killed the furore".

But that was the whole point of the furore: what was being proposed by the ABF was outside the law.

One of the great things about social media is that people from all walks of life use it - including lawyers. And thus it did not take long for lawyers such as Leanne O'Donnell to tweet links to the relevant sections of the Migration Act.

This showed it was clearly outside the ABF's legal bounds to be "speaking with any individual we cross paths with" about the state of their visa or any other matter.

At 12:54pm, the ABF issued a clarification, blaming any misunderstandings on "media reports". It tweeted shortly afterwards, "The ABF does not and will not stop people at random in the streets," which was fine, except that was the exact opposite of what its own regional commander had said it would be doing.

By this point, the crowds in Melbourne were already gathering, but no one from the ABF or from the office of the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, had appeared to explain the situation.

It was this silence that showed that social media was not over-reacting.

This Government has gone out of its way to keep the actions of the Border Force secret. And once again this was the case with the Minister's office immediate response being to state that Operation Fortitude is an "operational matter" and Ministers do not direct ops.

Thus we had a department suggesting that it would be doing something outside the law, and the Minister responsible wanting to say nothing.

Any journalist not awake to this issue is either a bit too trusting, or perhaps should go back to working as a Liberal party spinner.

It was only once the Melbourne rally was of such a size that the press conference and operation was called off that we finally heard from the ABF Commissioner.

Roman Quaedvlieg told the media that the initial media release was "clumsily worded" and was "cleared at a low level in the organisation". Given he stated that regional commander Don Smith had seen the comments that were put in his name, his use of "low level" seems a bit loose.

Random visa spot checks are no small matter - the Prime Minister recognised as much when he said the media release "was over the top and wrong because we would never stop people randomly in the street demanding their visa details. We don't do that sort of thing in Australia and it will never happen under this Government."

But without social media, all of this would have gone through to the keeper. The abandonment of the operation was as SMH's Mark Kenny writes "inevitable", but only because of social media.

Without social media, there may possibly have been a clarification from the ABF, but it would not even have made the evening news. It certainly would not have made most newspapers - because even with the massive stuff-up, most News Corp papers buried it.

Let's not fall into the trap of suggesting the events occurred only because of "citizen journalists" on Twitter. Journalists and media organisations on social media were at the forefront of spreading information about the Melbourne rally, for instance.

Kenny's argument that the whole thing was just kids on Twitter lacks both wit and insight.

And this wasn't about social media being anti-Liberal Party, either. The limp response by Bill Shorten, in which he expressed no concerns about people's rights possibly being trampled, was absolutely pilloried.

This is about the power and dissemination of social media. No wonder some in the traditional media hate it so.

And we know people like Chris Kenny are aware of social media's power. Because where did he spend all Friday and the weekend letting everyone know that people on Twitter were over-reacting?

Why, on Twitter of course.

Greg Jericho writes weekly for The Drum. He tweets at @grogsgamut.