twitting/tweeting from a funeral service...

Putting aside the funeral issue, interesting to read the opinions on tweeting, just three years ago.

 

excellent pull, piotr! 10 pages in 17 days! i can see where this would've been the hottest of j-topics almost three years ago. now i suppose we've numbed to most of it.

again, most of y'all active folks know this terrain better than i do these days. i repeat: i miss being able to work anymore; i DO NOT miss being a part in the technological 'progress' the industry has made. even back in the day there were aspects of the gig that were difficult to navigate as a human being -- i.e., calling the mother of a teen killed in gang warfare, anything of that ilk. but at least that was in an attempt to build the best story possible.

twitting a play-by-play of a funeral? NEVER. doing the sort of pre-game/post-game 'tweeting' ian says he did? i dunno. still strikes me as slimy. perhaps most importantly, UNNECESSARY...


the 'public figure' part of the argument even leaves me questioning the defense. sure, a 'public figure' in that she became known because of who she was married to and then in recgnition of her good deeds. but she wasn't an elected official. or an attention-craved celebrity.

she was a great lady who passed away. her death/funeral is news worthy of coverage. i'm simply questioning the importance attached to the immediacy of reporting details, that's all.

just strikes me wrong. if that makes me a dinosaur, well, guilty as charged. i'd like to believe there are people under 30 who are as uneasy about this as i am but maybe not.

it's still okay for me to opine that i think it sucks, though, right? or maybe i should tweet it someplace... now, if i only had a twitter account...

 

I would bet that he didn't look out of place even if he was typing on a phone just outside the area. When you think about who was at the service -- prominent folks taking time out of busy schedules -- I'd wager there were dozens of people checking their Blackberrys and iPhones for e-mails, texts and tweets.

The event was newsworthy because people wanted to know who attended and what was said. The reporter distributed that information quickly and accurately, and refrained from doing so during the service. Taking notes or using a recorder during the service, to me, seems like more of a faux pas.

 

Numb? I would argue the ramifications and ethics of Twitter have been discussed enough that good journalists know how to use it properly.

 

argue that all you'd like but i was made aware of this by quite a 'good' journalist who called me to say how out of line he thought it. now, granted, this was before we before we became aware that ian didn't do his active 'tweeting' DURING the ceremony. but for those who now consider this a non-issue, a no-brainer, regardless of where he was tweeting from, well, as i said, bless all of the present-day reporters can do this without flinching at all.

 

No. It's not a non-issue, nor a no-brainer.

It's something that you have to think about, and something that "good" journalists think about before doing.

It goes back to the notes/recorder thing. There you are, at a funeral, taking notes and thinking "well, maybe I'll paraphrase that" and "what's my lede?" I just don't see how tweeting outside the service is any more disrespectful.

 

It's tweeting, not twitting. I have no idea what twitting is, though I think Monty Python might have done a skit about it way before Twitter ever started.

 

If Ian was in the right, why is he so defensive? When you mix "Pimpin' ain't easy" in your stream with this, you lose credibility. Just another case of why the need to report everything all the time is destroying journalism.

 

This can be done well, I swear. You open a Twitter account. You use it to tweet and retweet news, whether it be breaking or just interesting. You don't tweet that you're in a temple and tell people that you're not in a temple. You don't make jokes and break news in the same breath.

"Pimpin' ain't easy"? On that afternoon? Now that I have a problem with. Going back and forth with readers? That too. Posting details on an event you're covering, and shutting off the cell phone during the service? I woulda stopped when I entered the temple, but I'm not going to bash him for it without seeing it.

I would like to know if the family or friends felt like he was doing anything disrespectful. Anybody know?

 

Ian comes off as a clown in his tweets today. The back-and-forth while he is in the temple is just one of his errors in judgement. Do Twitter spats automatically make reporters look like douches?

 

Sports radio in Boston did an hour on this today. I hate when talking head and callers try to talk journalism as if they have a clue. But I guess that's how athletes feel when I try to talk about their jobs as if I have a clue.

He had a phone out outside the temple tweeting, it appears. Is that any more/less offensive or rude than having a notebook out jotting down notes? Having a long lens camera out trying to get a shot? Those are acceptable tools of the trade, yes? In 2011, a cell phone is too.

Would be offensive is he had his phone out/wasn't paying attention during the service. Sounds like that's not at all what happened.