Take Every Tweet With a Grain of Salt

For better or worse Twitter has become an indicator of breaking news like the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. The other edge of that sword Twitter has become a way to get fictional items to spread as fast, like Jeff Goldblum’s death.  Just this evening a group was able to trend the topic of Miley Cyrus being pregnant.

I’ve wondered when someone RT (retweets) a report of some tragic news if they ask themselves how creditable is the source before the hit send. The delay that TV, newspapers and radio has in reporting these news events has more to do with fact checking than just being slow out of the gate. When a news agency runs with a story without checking the facts and it’s caught that reporter and maybe even the editor or producer let it slide without checking the facts faces a strong chance off being released from that position.

We don’t hold people on Twitter to that same standard. It’s forgotten who actually started the rumor. What if we decided to ‘unfollow’ the ones that started the false tweets or the ones relaying them? What if the complaint about the user was brought to Twitter’s attention, would they cancel that account? It’s worth considering.

Twitter is a useful tool for communicating and broadcasting a quick note or where to turn for a breaking news report. With a Tweet only capable of carrying a payload of 140 characters of less at a time it’s still not ready for prime time until everyone using it for good. To get Twitter to the point of a trusted source folks are going to have to exercise due diligence and start fact checking.