First off, let's get this out of the way; Am I a journalist? NO. Do I understand real time news and social media? Yeah. Pretty damn sure I do.I joined Twitter in August of 2008, but that is not when I actually started using it. All I knew is that I thought I should sign up and at the very least, squat on my first name.
(Oh look! Notes, not tweets!)
(Oh look! Notes, not tweets!)
Breaking News.
Whether it is a wildfire, police chase, presidential speech, protest, hostage situation, etc., we have all become accustomed to getting the very latest and the tiniest detail about the event we choose to lock-on to.
Why? I am not 100% sure, but it is similar to rubber-necking a nasty car accident. We get to go "ooooh, ohhh, *tisk_tisk* and what have you.
Sometimes real-time news is beneficial. Take wildfires, for example. Sharing valuable information such as evacuation maps and places of refuge is helpful for those that are affected. Or an Amber Alert, traffic incident, road closures, on and on and on. Useful.
Other times, this rapid spread of information holds little to no value to the general public other than to gawk.
Although I can present many different examples of this, I will use today's hostage situation at the Discovery Channel headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Around 11am pacific time (that is where I am located, so I use it as my reference), I instant messaged Tray McGuire, the founder of the online Twitter news account we maintain (@UpfrontNews), to a message I had seen coming from a local Maryland news source about a "possible hostage" situation. From just that simple message I could tell something was going on. Now, that could turn out to be a small, localized incident such as a domestic dispute or it can turn into something much larger, like it did today.
The point being, it was unclear yet how big this situation was going to be so I never tweeted on my main account that this was going on. Why? Well, a lot of locals follow me, they were all engrossed in the Apple iPod press event that was going on and I still was gathering information. Gathering, digging deeper, cross checking. Not sharing yet. That is important.
After I felt I had enough details to assume this was a much larger situation unfolding, I did tweet what I thought was worth sharing with others on my private account.
The first tweet I posted was "It's weird that #Discovery can be used for two events going on right now on opposite sides of the country". Referring to the Apple press event and the Silver Spring situation. It's vague. I am not saying much of anything, rather I was suggesting that people could follow the hashtag #Discovery.
This went out to a much smaller audience (approximately 900 followers) than it would have if I had used my main account, @Alonis.
I had scanner feed for Montgomery County pulled up and we both had the local news feed on, had made contact with local authorities and started looking at maps of the area. What schools are nearby? How are they handling this situation? What transit systems could be affected. Are there any government buildings located within close proximity?
In my opinion, the majority of people, the general public, didn't need to know everything that we were working on.
We knew we had enough information to post a tweet about it on our news account, @UpfrontNews, sourced CNN to be on the safe side. Then Tray and I continued to dig and gather as much as we could on the incident.
After hearing the suspect's name on the local live feed, the first thing I did was write it down. Secondly, search it like mad on the Internet. Search engines, social networking sites, telephone listings...all of that.
Yes. I got to his MySpace page, his manifesto, some random addresses from British Columbia to San Diego, but WHAT good would that do to post on our news site? What good would that do for the public? Nothing. Nothing at all.
That information was only pertinent for news gathering, to get a better perspective on the POSSIBLE person that is a suspect in a developing situation.
Of course I was not the only person in the world 'Googling' the crud out of this man's name. The difference however, is that I was not spreading every little find of his web trail of crumbs to the masses. But, you bet your sweet ass that others were.
** Be the first! Get out there with the scoop! More traffic, more clicks! MUST. TWEET. EVERYTHING. Even if we have not confirmed. Even if we have not cross checked it. Who cares! People will flock because we have *this*, we have *that* and when we change details or correct ourselves, every one's brains will be hazed over with a new tantalizing link we can share with them! Go, go, GO!**
Okay. So maybe that is not what folks in newsrooms were saying out loud, but it is how they behaved.
@BreakingNews (now operated by MSNBC) tweeted: A picture posted on Twitter possibly of the suspected #Discovery gunman, re-tweeted widely - http://yfrog.com/2mhdmdj
This tweet ALONE was retweeted more than 100 times. And you can see just how many people tweeted this UNCOMFIRMED picture of the SUPPOSED suspect on Twitter Search
The initial tweet came from @jdivenere. His profile information states his name is Jason Divenere but his location is given as Snowmass Village, CO. Really only one thing made his tweet SEEM to be credible...
his bio says he works for Discovery. That is it.
Discovery what? The store? A local affiliate in Colorado? Who knows. He may even work in Silver Spring, Maryland, but not a single person had verified that at the time.
@NewMediaJim retweeted it as well as many others with high follower counts.
I am not necessarily calling Jim Long or others out for a sloppy retweet but I am pointing out that there is a serious problem in new media and the spread of unverified information being shared at lightning speed.
It needs to stop. For the sake of actual news, it needs to stop.
Finally, @MSNBC_Pictures posted this tweet: Help! We're trying to verify where/when/who for this: http://bit.ly/cj8NvA - Info? Call 425-706-1950 (@jdivenere) http://yfrog.com/2mhdmdj
Yup. You guessed it. I called.
I called because I was tired of seeing this image get posted all over the place when it was not the suspect but was instead an image of a SWAT officer. You could see in the press conferences that other SWAT members were dressed the same way. Besides, when I first saw it, several things stuck out in my mind; The suspect was seen with devices attached to him. None in the pic. Also, the suspect's body build did not match. Lastly, my gut told me "eh-eh".
I spoke to a nice gentleman in the Media Relations department at MSNBC. I told him what I could tell from others tweets that were posted by people whose bios actually said they lived in the area of Discovery Channel HQ. Ya know, NOT Colorado. People like @kibrly
Which is what this entire post is about.
WHY are news organizations that have schooled journalists not verifying what they toss out on the web before doing their homework?
Whatever happened to keeping your mouth shut until you were sure, I mean REALLY sure and could publish (post) something that you felt you could stand behind?
Does the fact that Twitter is 140 characters lend itself to the notion that any random crap we spew forth from our finger tips is a novelty and therefore not something we should worry about being authentic, verifiable, credible, accurate??
In my opinion, NO. I stand behind every tweet I post, every Facebook status I make, every word I speak. If I am in doubt, I will mention that I am not sure. And better yet, I will not share it with millions of strangers to leave it open to their interpretation.
It is not the general public's job to digest all this crap and then determine what is real or valid. That is the reporters, editors, journalists, etc., job.
Is it that we just want to be first? To be popular? To get the most attention? To be able to say "Yeah, I know already, I tweeted it."?
I know we are all learning in this ever changing medium, but some restraint and better judgement needs to be exercised.
I truly hope that some better policies get put in place at the news organizations, QUICKLY. The public deserves better.
So what do you think?
Do you think that you should be glued to every tweet, every Facebook status, every YouTube posting as a breaking news situation unfolds all of the time? Do you still trust a news agency that shares information that has not been verified, sourced or is inaccurate? If so, why?
P.S.:
George Kelly shared this link to a blogtalkradio.com post by O.N.A.http://journalists.org/ (Online News Association) with me today. It was recorded yesterday. It's about an hour long, but it is all about the current dilemma with breaking news and social media's role in it. I hope more of you will listen to it.
P.S.S:
(Even this stupid Facebook link was shared. Although I admit the 1-800-Flowers order is funny, it was tacky and irrelevant to any actual real news)
