Where I live some newspapers get 90% of Twitter/Instagram
It's also much safer for journalists, Newspaper reporters get killed easily over here.

Do regular news reporters now rely upon T instead of search engines breaking news headlines?

I do not think that competent reporters take Twitter or any social media as a news source though many have participated there for years. They should be familiar enough with the media accounts to know which are useful and which are pushing an agenda. I think most News professionals have developed a network of resources and check into topics before passing them on. And then, there are editors.

It is possible that the person you heard had some sources in mind to check out, but then their choice of source/s would determine how well informed they are.

Twitter is a great source for breaking news, locally, as it happens, and a good way to connect with journalists reporting stories. Of course, it's no good if you follow the wrong people. Just like any other social media service, it's full of nonsense, too. Simply, hone the people you follow to credible sources.

The real problem is that a good part of the general public mostly gets its news from social media, but in many cases the "news" it gets is being manipulated by groups with malicious intentions.

I'm thinking more on aristotle's line here and with the recent Twitter files revalations it's very easy to see how information can be manipulated, mind you the last three years have seen genuine investigative journalism, how shall I put it, collapse!

The main reason for me commenting about this was because of the minister specifically referring to T and it made me wonder just how much this may have affected all search engines, have they re-directed their advertising spend, together with publishers and their advertising revenue plus decreases in overall website traffic.

One of my best friends is a top journo with a major group who just so happens to be on holday right now, I'll ask him for any insights when he returns next week. Yes he does have his phone with him however sensibly switched off :-)

...and it made me wonder just how much this may have affected all search engines, have they re-directed their advertising spend, together with publishers and their advertising revenue plus decreases in overall website traffic.

Advertisers go where the eyeballs are. That simple.

The word news may have been used in the context of EVENTS. Social media is virtually without peer for breaking news about events.

Twitter (and Facebook) is where you can go to find people sharing their experiences of a local event.

When San Francisco experienced flooding I turned to Twitter because locals posted videos of sewers gushing and flooded streets.

When Russia invaded Ukraine I knew it in real time before it was reported on the news because people in Ukraine (whom I am connected to on social media) posted videos of missiles and explosions hitting Kyiv. They posted real-time reports as it was happening in the first moments of Russia's evil aggression.

That's why news organizations sometimes turn to social media for images and videos because there are regular people on the ground posting image and videos.

For me it's also a great way to gauge if an event is widespread or not, like when the OVH data center in France caught fire. I knew about it from reports posted on social media by people affected by the outage. It wasn't reported on mainstream news until many hours later.

Social media is not a source of "news" in the sense of traditional This is the Evening News reporting. It's more in the sense of real people posting their in the moment experiences of events, in real-time.

It's more in the sense of real people posting their in the moment experiences of events, in real-time.

Whilst I understand from where you are coming it is also blatantly obvious that there have been some gross misrepresentations of "real-time" events over the past 3 years on T.

Actually, at a local level I'm guessing and would say FB is more "genuine" than T but then again I use neither. Also, from what I hear and see, is that insofar as UK users are concerned T is nowhere near as popular amongst the general public as it is in the USA. I tried it for my global business, utterly pountless, we tried for the hotel venue from 2010-2016, initially it was ok but then no matter what we did people didn't use it ... Yet they continued to use FB for exactly the same postings ... Is that where we went wrong?

blatantly obvious that there have been some gross misrepresentations of "real-time" events

I agree with you 100%. But I'm not referencing opinions of events or the daily low quality crap that people re-post, which indeed are often misrepresentations and are unreliable.

An example is a photo someone re-posted a few weeks back of a dead fox that looked uninjured but when opened up it had a balloon stuck in its stomach. 100% bulls---t.
Same with another image of a mystery canine shot in Montana that didn't look like any wolf, stating that it was too far north to be a chupacabra (AS IF a chupacabra was a real thing!). The report was from 2018 and another news article reported that it was indeed a gray wolf. Re-posted images are a waste of everyone's time...

I am referencing videos (and to a limited extent) multiple statements by actual eye-witnesses of events in real-time, not crap that people re-post.

While it's true that videos and images are misrepresented, those are images that are re-posted, not actual eye-witness representations.

As for statements, I get emails from people alerting me that something dire is happening related to what we (you and I on the Internet) do. But if there isn't any significant chatter on social media to corroborate it then I'll generally take a pass on writing about it because it's not impacting a lot of people.

The OVH fire was a big deal. Multiple people alerted me to it, many people, perhaps hundreds, were posting to social media.

T, like all other media, is prone to fraud, deep fake, agitators, instigators (not the same thing), politics, etc.

It is rapidly approaching the point where you can't trust ANY of the "news sources" anywhere in the world, and should always question those you see and hear the most!

All one can do is use eyes, ears, and brains to filter out the chaff---and find that kernel of truth---if there is any truth there at all!