Another example of a journalist not understanding social media, part 1
Editor’s note: when I started writing this blog, I realized it had gotten quite lengthy. I’ve decided to split it up into two parts. Click here to read the second part here.
This isn’t what I planning to blog about today. However, when I heard about how Washington Post sports columnist Mike Wise sent out a fake tweet about Ben Roethlisberger, I just got incredibly angry and felt the need to post my opinion on the story.
Quick recap for those not familiar with the story: Besides being a sports columnist with the Washington Post, Mike Wise has a radio show in Washington, DC. On his show, Wise has apparently talked about how bloggers and reporters will retweet information without doing any fact checking. Wise decided to do an experiment on his show, and sent out a tweet that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger would be suspended for five games. (Roethlisberger has already been suspended for six games, but it was widely believed that his suspension would be reduced to four games. It was reduced last Friday. ) Wise’s tweet spread across the Internet. However, Wise revealed that it was a hoax. He had made the whole thing up. Since he sent out the tweet from a Twitter account (@MikeWiseguy) that identifies him as a reporter, the Washington Post has suspended Wise for a month.
When I first heard this story, I was shocked that a trained journalist would do anything this stupid. The number one rule in journalism is don’t make up information. If you get caught making up a story, your career in journalism is pretty much over.
Even though I think Wise was incredibly stupid, I was interested in hearing why he did it. I listened to his interviews on NPR’s “On the Media” and CNN. Instead of coming off as a journalist who is sorry what he did, Wise came off as a kid who was more sorry he got caught.
Not taking responsibility for his own action
What made me furious listening to these interviews is Wise is blaming everyone but himself for tweeting the false information. He claims that after a few minutes, he sent out another tweet basically saying the previous one was false. However, Wise says that he was busy multi-tasking on the radio show, and he didn’t realize that the second tweet was never sent because Twitter was down.
Are you kidding me Mike Wise? It is Twitter’s fault because you decided to tweet false information? Why were you not paying attention to see if that second tweet went out? When I’m sending an important tweet, I always make sure to see if it pops up in my timeline. It only takes a minute, and you can even multi-task while doing it. If you are going to take the time to do this social media experiment, then you should make sure to follow it through.
Make sure to check out tomorrow’s blog post to read the rest of the blog
