Does Twitter threaten ethical journalism?

In particular, Manson notes a recent incident on Twitter where journalists reporting from a courtroom falsely Tweeted that Jackie Selebi, former South African national police commissioner, was guilty of obstruction of justice. Consequently, all of the re-tweets of the journalists' error were also wrong and a large audience was received the false news report.

Moreover, Manson notes that there is often much confusion surrounding breaking stories and editors often play an important role in checking that stories are correct before releasing them to the public. Clearly, with Twitter journalists skip the step of going through an editor, meaning one mistake in a tweet could lead to widespread miscommunication of the news.

Along the same lines, Bloomberg's editor-in-chief, Matt Winkler expressed concern last may over how some financial news and data was being phrased on Twitter. Furthermore, last year it was reported that two university students had started a Twitter account for UK foreign secretary David Miliband, highlighting the fact that journalists need to verify information they find on Twitter. Twitter also reported false information regarding Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni earlier this year.

With the miscommunication of news in tweets, the ethics of Twitter have also come into question. In particular, Manson asks: "can media organizations and journalists delete inaccurate tweets that were posted without revealing they did so?" While it may be somewhat uncomfortable for journalists to attach withdrawal and correction notices to their work, it is important that journalists to be transparent when reasoning for changing what has already been reported. It is unclear if journalists would take the same correction measures when working on Twitter.

Moreover, Twitter's minimalist approach could potentially stifle thought-provoking journalistic voices. Being limited to only 140 characters, journalists using Twitter do not really have the space to ask intriguing questions or even fully develop their thoughts.

On the other hand, Manson does see social media as presenting an opportunity to correct some of the long-standing ills of journalism. "Society isn't always well-served by the media," he writes. "Some stories never see the light of day because of commercial self interest or political sympathies. In other instances, journalists become mouthpieces for propaganda." Social media could ameliorate these kinds of problems by acting as an independent news source. 

Overall, journalists and readers should be careful as to how they approach Twitter. While the news source could be a valuable tool to correct the long standing problems of journalism, it could also compromise the ethics of journalism and be the medium in which false news stories become viral information.

Sources: Memeburn