A parody Twitter account for the former News of the World showbiz editor Dan Wootton fired off this salacious tweet today:
Which set of a flurry of RTs, one by Channel 4 anchor Jon Snow and a few other journalists — including two Reuters journalists on their personal accounts — giving the rumor a more credible spin as it burned through Twitter. Meanwhile, official news accounts held off on the news (our curation team at @breakingnews was able to backtrack and debunk the rumor before sending anything out.)
Less than an hour or so after it began, the rumor came to an end when Piers Morgan tweeted that he’s still comfortably at CNN, and Jon Snow and others quickly backtracked, apologizing to Morgan for helping spread the rumor.
The fake Twitter story raises an interesting question: is there a higher bar for official news accounts compared to personal journalist accounts? In a world in which many journalists are curating news on their own accounts — building their “personal brands” often in parallel with their official news brands — should there be? Reuters’ Felix Salmon argues:
“I think that big flagship Twitter accounts like @Reuters or @WSJ should be held to a higher standard. But for the rest of us, we’re conversing on Twitter just like we converse in real life. In the newsroom, we say things like ‘did you hear that Piers Morgan just got suspended?’ and that’s fine. Is it really that bad to say that kind of thing in the new newsroom called Twitter? I don’t think so.”
What do you think? Should there be different standards on the real-time web?
See also: Anatomy of a Twitter rumor