Mike Wise of WaPo fakes story to make a point

Touche. And exactly the reason I got out of sports.

 

What about CSN, any of the local tv outlets, MASN, etc.

 

What is he Tweeting about Dibble?

 

His social experiment was as dangerous as the 'anonymous source not authorized to speak for' the subject, in my eyes. The only thing Wise did was take the arrogant, "I'm schooling you," approach when he should've said "This is a dumb joke."

I get the feeling it was inspired by Tim Cowlishaw's reports where he credited a source who's never been wrong, and followed it up with a strong Peter King-esque maybe. He's still a dick for acting like a puppet master with mainstream media. We're not attached to his strings. But anyone who took his tweet, and actually has access to research and report the contrary, should have offered conflicting (and accurate) reports rather than set the stage for a crucifixion.

Wise's bulshit objective is only accurate when analyzing this media climate. It's all about getting news to seekers (not readers) as fast as possible, and making sure your SEO skills are good enough to lure them.

Also, Florio is a hack and his soapbox is paper thin.

 

In today's world -- not the world of 10 or 20 years ago, simply today -- the tweets of respected writers and reporters, where we actually know it's the person, are in play as sources of news. We might not like it, but that's the way it is.

 

SFE, I agree. That's why it's incumbent on those reporters to use Twitter as they have been trained to use other media. Standards of journalism apply to EVERYTHING you write or say, or should anyway.

 

The ombud weighs in:

'Wise was lucky he wasn't sacked.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090304149.html

 

Score another one for the Toy Department.

 

I completely agree. Twitter, facebook, etc. are there to be read, so those are legit sources. Mike Wise just turned himself into an illegitimate one, that is all.

Basically, what this comes down to in my opinion, is that Mr. Wise made a great point about journalists running with stories that are big news because people are desperate for stories. However, the points that he also made, surely unintentionally, are that not only is he WORSE than those who ran with his story for the fact that he fabricated one, but that the Washington Post should fire him. If their writers are not credible, what is a credible source besides the primary source itself (which is not always possible to contact nowadays with so many people in the media business; the Steelers phones would have erupted past the point of control and the story would have been skewed anyways)? I guess that brings up a good point, but respected journalists should be able to be relied upon to deliver true stories. Otherwise, he is just like every other amateur sports-writer, and shouldn't be working for such a publication. Now he is worse than any honest sports-writer of any caliber. That is a bit ridiculous, what he did.

 

That's fantastic. I love that the guy defended himself by insisting "the point remains." The point being that a fictional congressman doesn't understand how budgets work.

 

Laughable and sad at the same time. Looks like editors are going to have to put the clamps down on sourcing Twitter. That's humiliating.. to all of us in this profession.