How quickly do you retweet something from unknown source on Twitter?

Interesting stuff here.

http://jasonschreier.com/2011/07/27/twitter-killing-journalism/

There's no need to kill the whole medium. It's not that you can't trust Twitter; you have to be careful about who you trust on Twitter. There's a far-too-easy ability to retweet something, then do the legwork to check if it's right for your own reporting.

 

As a media person, I don't really see the advantage of re-tweeting "news" that someone else is reporting.

Maybe if you want to give a plug to someone you know, but to do it as some alternative to reporting, that's just dumb.

 

Two points:

1. No, you can't trust Twitter. And reporters should be careful about what they retweet. Way too much false stuff slips through. The art of verification has been lost sometimes.

2. This was sort of an unfair moment to test NFL reporters. This was probably the craziest free agent frenzy in league history, with literally hundreds of players shopping for deals at the same time. Good job, you caught some of them. Should reporters have been more careful? Absolutely. But I wouldn't pat myself on the back too hard.

 

That was pretty amusing.

And I don't retweet anything if I'm not familiar with the person tweeting it in the first place.

 

How the hell does the official Arizona Cardinals website pick up an incorrect tweet about its own team and report it as fact -- as well as speculating about why it is such a weird signing. That's awful.

 

I would have said it was automatically set to retweet items -- except you probably wouldn't want your tweet deck to be making snarky comments, too.

 

Without reading the article, I'd answer the question with "not so long as the source is unknown."

 

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/79446/

 

Today is my third anniversary of using Twitter so clearly I'm (not) an expert on the subject.

Re-tweeting somebody else is not the same thing as confirming the information from that source, you're simply pointing out that somebody else said this. I wouldn't advise re-tweeting notoriously unreliable rumormongers (mostly because I don't like encouraging those people) or just any random schmuck, but I don't think it's hurts your credibility of you re-tweet something and it's proven to be wrong.

 

How is this unfair?
If you're a reporter, you don't go forward with something unless you can confirm it. Being lazy isn't an excuse.
Is the old adage of, "if you're mother says she loves you, find another source to confirm" gone now?

 

I see a lot of "interesting if true" RTs on stuff like the reports earlier this week that LSU's AD might be headed to Tennessee.

Seems a good approach.

 

I don't know. Mom doesn't tweet much.