DANGERS OF TWEETING AS A JOURNALIST
Journalists that tweet are pretty common (I'm one) and for many it's part of the job. but it's also a form of publishing and, as such, a journalist should abide by the same rules of reporting when publishing their 140-word tweets.
One example of when things can go wrong happening with @Tulsathit, Managing Editor of The Nation. On Thursday afternoon he tweeted: "We are checking reported grenade attack at Empire Tower". For those who don't know, Empire Tower is a 55+ storey building in the Sathorn area of Bangkok. Tulsathit has almost 2,500 followers and his words were re-tweeted several times before, some 45 minutes after his first message, he tweeted: "Oh, we have just received confirmation that there's no bomb at Empire Tower."
Tulsathit's tweets also are linked to the front page of his newspaper's website, but even without that fact should a journalist, and a respected one at that, be reporting unverified and unsubstantiated news through Twitter?
I wonder if Nation Multimedia has a code of standards for its reporters that tweet?
1 comments:
To answer your last question: apparently not!
In my estimation, Twitter is being used as an experiment toy by the whole newsroom staff. It means that everyone is free to use it in any form they like to.
The danger lies that most of them do not regard Twitter as a real tool, but a chit-chat-toy. There's a fine line between actual reporting or just trivial stuff.
All in all this shows the difficulty of journalists on how to use Twitter, as there are no written rules of engagement. Whether The Nation or any other news organization should introduce them, is another issue.
P.S.: @Tulsathit's bio reads: "Updates, gossips, rants from Nation newsroom" - go figure!
Post a Comment