Media Ethics: Issues and Cases 8th Edition by Philip Patterson, Lee Wilkins

Exercise 7

Twitter Ethics for Journalists: Can You Scoop Yourself?
CHARLOTTE BELLIS
TVNZ-Christchurch, New Zealand
Journalists in every developed nation are experimenting with using Twitter as a reporting tool. The site allows members to post searchable updates of fewer than 140 characters at a time about themselves and the world around them in updates called "tweets." "In countries all around the world, people follow the sources most relevant to them and access information via Twitter as it happens-from breaking world news to updates from friends," reads Twitter.com. One blogger on CisionBlog headlines, "Social media is a virtual Rolodex for journalists and media relations people." ReadWriteWeb.com believes Twitter helps them with quality assurance, discovering breaking stories, conducting interviews and promoting their work. A columnist on Poynter believes Twitter's ability to search updates "could make it easier for journalists to track beats, trends or issues."
However, some have questioned whether the personal element Twitter invokes could result in a lack of vetting, unethical behavior or a blurring of traditional boundaries between journalist and citizen.
In January 2009, David Schlesinger, Editor-in-Chief at Reuters, published a blog entitled Full Disclosure: Twittering away standards or tweeting the future of journalism? after twittering from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Other journalists there joined @daschles in his Twitter experiment as they pushed to be the first to break developments, post comments on the behind- the-scenes experience and promote their stories. With '#davos' as the standard signoff for the attending journalists, any Twitterer could follow a continuous stream of comments from the ski resort.
However, the Silicon Alley Insider highlighted Schlesinger in a story headlined "Reuters Scoops Itself by Twittering from Davos." While at the meeting, Schlesinger-under his Twitter handle @Daschles-had tweeted comments like, "[Financial speculator George] Soros-financial industry has to shrink by half! #davos." And another: "Soros-new financial system needs to emerge before we can talk about length of recession." The Insider article asked Schlesinger "If a Reuters correspondent had done that, would you fire him/her?"
Schlesinger responded that Twitter is journalism and that it has the potential to be dangerous. He said he was not embarrassed that his tweets beat the Reuters newswire, adding he was not destroying Reuters standards by encouraging tweeting. "If great storytellers use [microblogging, macroblogging and social networking] platforms to display their knowledge, access, expertise and abilities, I think that is a marvelous advance."
In a follow-up interview Schlesinger said he encourages his reporters to experiment but understood how his tweets could stir debate, particularly because journalism is at an "inflection point" in history. "... A company like Reuters makes most of its money from being first, so by challenging our own systems and thus business model I became a legitimate target."
"Twitter is such a fast medium that it challenges our standards to always have, for example, two pairs of eyes on a story," said Schlesinger. "Do we have whole new standards for Twitter? Do we allow the unedited and unvetted?"
As journalism works to remodel itself for the 21st century, many believe the instantaneous nature of the Internet is a key element in the industry's viability. For journalists the problem becomes should they publish-via tweets-information as soon as it is known, even when the nature of the medium itself dictates that the information will lack context. Or should the journalist hold off and spend time getting the context of the story, vetting it through a more regular editorial process and publishing it in a more traditional, less instantaneous medium?
Another problem for journalists using Twitter is that the social networking site was built for instantaneous, personal thoughts. Twitter naturally lends itself to divulging information as if to a friend and results in tweets that have a personal tone. Twitter makes it easy to muddle the personal and the professional as Canada's National Post technology reporter David George-Cosh, known as @sirdavid on Twitter, learned. After declining an interview with reporter George-Cosh, a marketing professional twittered: "Reporter to me, 'When the media calls you, you jump, OK!?' Why, when you called me and I'm not selling? Newspapers will get what they deserve."
The reporter saw the tweet and responded with six heated tweets that included multiple expletives directed toward the marketing professional. MediaStyle.ca characterized @sirdavid's response with this headline: " National Post reporter has total Twitter meltdown." Hours later, the National Post apologized on their Editor's blog for the reporter's conduct on Twitter.
Is promoting a story an appropriate use of Twitter? Who should do it? Why?