Twitter misinformation leads to false report of marital issues between Sarkozy and Bruni

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 15, 2010 at 6:29 PM

Although checking sources is a fundamental rule of journalism, with the increasing pervasiveness of social media sites like Twitter, the temptation to discard this old rule can become too strong for some journalists to resist.

As the Press Gazette's Dominick Ponsford posted on The Wire, reporters for various newpapers in the UK used Twitter as a source for an article covering rumors of marital difficulties between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni. The Independent's Steven Glover reprimanded the reporters for their failure to fact-check.

"A Twitter rumour alleging adultery on the part of a home-grown politician would not be taken up so eagerly by British newspapers," he said. "We apply more stringent standards to rumours about our own politicians."

The use of Twitter as a source--or some might say, a stand-in--for reporting is becoming more prevalent as the popular social networking site grows. Two students posing as UK foreign secretary David Miliband on Twitter managed to trick the Guardian, AFP, the Times, and the Telegraph into believing their tweet about Michael Jackson; CNN created quite a stir by broadcasting "unverified material" concerning the Iranian uprising taken from Twitter accounts whose users may or may not have actually been a part of the demonstrations.

Despite its shortcomings, some believe Twitter has a place in the new media landscape. Rick Sanchez, host of the weekday edition of CNN's Newsroom, lauded the benefits of Twitter at the 140 Characters Conference held in New York in June.

"Twitter has made me a better journalist," he said.

And Twitter can allow for citizen journalists to break news when average reporters aren't able to be there. Tweeter Janis Krums tweeted the first picture of the US Airways crash into the Hudson river, and Twitter offered a powerful aggregation tool for real-time information covering the Ft. Hood shootings in November.

Fox News anchor Clayton Morris managed to summarize a far-reaching debate that is not yet over during his discussion at the 140 Characters Conference.

"There's a tipping point right now with new, traditional, and social media," he said. "It's conversation versus fact checking. No one has answers to where this convergence is leading."

Considering the increase in incidences of sloppy reporting based on tweets, like that of the Sunday Times, hopefully journalists will aim to err on the side of fact checking in the future.

Sources: The Press Gazette, The Independent, The New York Times, Poynter Online , TechCrunch