The difference is, 24 hours news media covers news 24 hours a day. There's a lot of that time when there really just is no news to speak of. Social media might cover an event in real time with people glued to the screen, but we only see this type of occurrence when there's actually a significant event going on. This story might be covered by social news for days or hours, but when it's done everyone shuts it off and goes on with their lives until the next story. Meanwhile the 24 hour news media continues rolling, irrelevant as always.

Real time news isn't bad. Real time, 24 hour "news" is bad. That's how you get manufactured news stories, or media outlets creating/becoming the news.