Tweets are not news. Journalists today who base a story on a tweet are no better than the journos of yesteryear who wrote their stories by "pasting up" press releases from their subjects. They're shills. (The same might be said for political reporters who sit around the office watching C-SPAN and writing stories. But, no digression.)
If a tweet announces (for example) a move to change a particular government regulation, that might be news. But the Twitter medium is NOT the message. It's closer to something scrawled on the wall in a public toilet than it is to even a press release. A competent journo will follow up to obtain more or deeper sources, and background.
Here's an over-the-top idea: Twitter should introduce a feature that randomly attributes one tweet in a thousand to the wrong account. And Twitter should publicize that change and include it in their terms of service. The effect: journos risk their reputations who don't follow up to verify the source and content of tweets they report.
Twitter will never make this change. But putting the burden on journos to distrust and verify restores a part of that profession that's been fading away along with newspaper revenue.
Maybe there's another way to reduce the trustworthiness of Twitter content just enough to make verification necessary, and to put the burden on journos. They're trained to verify, hopefull.
Now, a certain 45th holder of a certain visible job tweets a lot. Stories saying that person tweeted something inflammatory may be news. But they're old and boring news. McDs has golden arches. Pope's Catholic. DJT spews rubbish on twitter.
If a tweet announces (for example) a move to change a particular government regulation, that might be news. But the Twitter medium is NOT the message. It's closer to something scrawled on the wall in a public toilet than it is to even a press release. A competent journo will follow up to obtain more or deeper sources, and background.
Here's an over-the-top idea: Twitter should introduce a feature that randomly attributes one tweet in a thousand to the wrong account. And Twitter should publicize that change and include it in their terms of service. The effect: journos risk their reputations who don't follow up to verify the source and content of tweets they report.
Twitter will never make this change. But putting the burden on journos to distrust and verify restores a part of that profession that's been fading away along with newspaper revenue.
Maybe there's another way to reduce the trustworthiness of Twitter content just enough to make verification necessary, and to put the burden on journos. They're trained to verify, hopefull.
Now, a certain 45th holder of a certain visible job tweets a lot. Stories saying that person tweeted something inflammatory may be news. But they're old and boring news. McDs has golden arches. Pope's Catholic. DJT spews rubbish on twitter.