I'm obviously talking about social media. When I'm tweeting about my own lunch, not that many people see it. But if the person tweeting is member of a large news corporation, like, say, ABC, and that tweet happens to be about the president, people might take notice. Like, a lot of people.
That's what happened in 2009, when President Obama casually mentioned that he thought Kanye West was an asshole after the VMA's. It was a statement overheard by many members of ABC, and while Terry Moran's tweet was the one that took off, several other employees also tweeted about it. ABC later apologized.
The details of this case don't really bother me - it seems to be a fluke that people even overheard the statement. But what does bother me is the immediacy of Twitter and other social media websites. In a newsroom, a story goes through several edits, even if it is being published on the web. Grammatical errors - and more serious libelous statements - are caught and corrected. When it's a reporter quickly typing out a 140-character tweet, those mistakes are often not caught until it's too late.
I'm not immune to the rush of breaking a story, either, even if it's just to my friends. A few months ago, I was waiting in the office of the counselor of the Journalism School at CU. I wanted to look over my classes for the next year, and make sure I was registering for the right things. Lots of kids had this same idea - I waited for a little over an hour, sitting on the couch and staring at the bright fish swimming around the tank. Soon, it was just me in the conference room. It was quiet, and I could hear everything the counselor was telling the student before me, a freshman.
"Well, they decided this morning that the journalism-plus program is going through, so I can give you the forms for that..."
My ears perked up. I hadn't heard that! I sent a quick tweet, saying something to the effect of "Just heard the journalism plus program is official. Anyone have details?"
I quickly heard from several professors I tweeted with, and students, all of them as surprised as I was. Apparently there'd been no official announcement yet. Almost as quickly, another woman stepped into the conference room.
"Someone just said they saw a tweet about journalism plus! How did they know that? It's not supposed to go out until tomorrow. __________ is upset."
The counselor looked upset. "I didn't tell anyone, I swear!"
I cringed - apparently I'd messed up. "That was me," I mumbled. "I'm sorry, I don't want to get anyone in trouble! I assumed it was fair game when I heard you telling that student. I thought I was the last to know."
They looked a little perturbed, but as I obviously hadn't meant any harm and offered to delete the tweet, they seemed to calm. They are staff in a journalism school, after all, and can't fault me too much for following my natural instincts.
But the point is this: I didn't think anything of sending a tweet, that had it gotten out, could have gotten any number of people in trouble - and for something that wasn't that necessary for the public to know. (In some cases, like an emergency, an error in a hastily-written tweet is justifiable.) Had I not had access to such an immediate form of communication, I might have thought for a few more minutes about what I was sending, or had a chance to ask the counselor for more information. I could have taken it back to an editor at a newsroom, and we could talk about it together.
But the fact that I literally had the ability to share my "scoop" with 300 people in seconds gave me more power than I really should be wielding.
I'm just glad it wasn't something more important - like the President calling somebody an asshole.
