Former LR blogger Don Day sent us a thoughtful piece on the need for retractions in Twitter feeds when appropriate. I swear, he wrote this well before my “Radio Appgate” debacle. We thank Don for the post and are very pleased to see his work on our site once again. -Safran
When you tweet something wrong, correct it
By Don L. Day, LR Blogger Emeritus
I’m a college football nut. Especially when it comes to Boise State’s improbable rise over the last decade or so. I spend Saturday afternoon watching games or at the stadium – and parts of Sunday watching for polls and tweeting away.
I’ve argued that the Associated Press Top 25 poll is a bit irrelevant these days. I’m not saying that is good or bad — but because it doesn’t have anything to do with the BCS formula, its influence is minimal – except to the media that keeps it alive of course.
But what I do expect is for it to be accurate. And by and large, I find it to be a better gauge of the standings than the flawed Harris or USA Today Coaches Polls (read the great book Death to the BCS for more on that). So when the folks that run the poll’s official Twitter account dropped this whopper a few weeks ago, I was stunned:
Boise State lost 41 points in @AP_Top25 poll. Led TCU by 25 last week, trail by 16 this week. Boise also picked up 2 first-place votes.
Except — that’s not what happened. Boise State actually GAINED 41 points in the poll that week — leap-frogging TCU. The only thing right in the whole tweet was that Boise picked up 2 first place votes. Fine — mistakes happen. But the Associated Press didn’t make a correction on Twitter.
Boise State fans got riled up over the mistake – with many replying to the AP noting the mistake. I was direct with this tweet: “Dear @AP_Top25 – You made a HUGE mistake 42 minutes ago. Care to correct it any time soon?”
But the correction never came. The AP just rolled on along as if it hadn’t messed up. The AP poll comes out before the Harris — one that influences the BCS. Could an errant tweet matter? Maybe, maybe not – but it would take just seconds to correct. And it isn’t like this particular Twitter account just sends a stream of one-way tweets — in fact, it responds, retweets and engages like a good media organization should. So why not fix your mistake?
This is bigger than the AP of course. Nearly every news org big and small has a presence on Twitter and Facebook – and mistakes are inevitable. But if the grand daddy of all news organizations doesn’t fix it’s mistakes, why should anyone else. I mean… it’s just Twitter. Who cares, right? This reminds me of the “It’s just the website” line of thinking that finally as mostly died off among major media. The bottom line: if a news organization puts its brand on something – it should own up to mistakes — on-air, in print, online, on mobile, on Twitter or via telekinesis.