A case of Twittering too fast

If blogging had created rumblings and a little bit of chaos in the journalism world, imagine the impact of Twitter, a real-time micro-blogging service.

The benefits of Twitter to journalism are manifold – and they have been well-documented in this column and others. But there’s a downside to Twitter too. And that’s best highlight by what happened last week involving Kanye West and US President Barack Obama.

In a nutshell, the president made comment about West which was Twittered and subsequently reported around the world. Problem was, the comments were made off the record.

The president was having pre-show conversation with CNBC's chief Washington correspondent. John Harwood. This kind of pre-tape chatter is normally considered off-the-record.

CNBC and ABC (which are not affiliates) happen to share a fiber optic line to save money. This allowed some ABC staff to listen in on the interview.

During what was probably a sound-check conversation, Harwood asked Obama for his views on the biggest entertainment story of the moment: West’s interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards.

“The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person. She's getting her award. What's he doing up there?” Obama say.

Harwood then asks: “Why would he do it?”

“He's a jackass,” Obama replies, which elicits a round of laughter from those in the studio.
 
You can hear the actual audio clip, which has been leaked on the Internet, by clicking on http://tr.my/6N1.

If you listen to it, you’ll find that the comments were clearly meant to be off the record. Obama is heard saying, “Come on guys. Cut the president some slack. I've got a lot of other stuff on my plate.”

Several ABC employees proceeded to Twitter the “jackass” comment. One of them was Terry Moran, a former White House correspondent and a co-anchor of the popular Nightline show. His Twitter has over a million followers.

The Tweet: “Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a 'jackass' for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT'S presidential.”

The Tweet spread like wildfire. Although Moran deleted the Tweet after about an hour later, it was already too late. His Tweet was already common knowledge and screen captures of it were already available on the Internet.

ABC News quickly called CNBC and the White House to apologize.

“In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview,” ABC News said in a press statement.

“This was done before our editorial process had been completed. That was wrong. We apologize to the White House and CNBC and are taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again,” it added.

Meanwhile, ABC News Senior Vice-President Jeffrey Schneider said, “There should be a very dark, easily understood line between material that is approved, vetted and published, and material that has yet to reach that standard. The message to our employees is very clear: If it's approved and published, then people can tweet it or share it on Facebook. Prior to that happening, the information is not to be shared.”

This “jackass” episode is a hot topic for debate amongst journalists, editors and news media management over what should and should not be published in blogs, Twitter, Facebook and the like. Few news media organisations have formal guidelines on such things.  

What Schneider has to say about it is quite instructive: “One of the lessons learned here is that when somebody who is well-known to the news audience tweets something, even on a private Twitter account, it has the same impact almost as ABCNews.com publishing it.”

Oon Yeoh is editor for New Media at The Edge. He invites you to follow him at www.twitter.com/oonyeoh.