Twitter unethical journalism?

After the MTV VMA drama (skip to 00:40 of clip) where Kanye West once again stole the limelight, media organisations and interviewers all around the world have been seeking opinion- Team Kanye or Team Taylor?

Before an ABC interview with Barack Obama, the interviewer asked the President if his daughters were as upset about Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech as his were.

The interviewer and Pesident talk about the incident and Obama calls West “a jackass”. Someone in the background jokes that this should be made the first question, inplying the interview clearly had not started.

Journalistic practice usually allows for conversation and comments before and after an interview, with the unspoken agreement that anything said is off the record and NOT for publication. Any information clearly not part of the interview should be approved by the person concerned before being published or circulated.

This is what has made Obama’s comment even bigger news than the incident itself, causing some to question whether new technologies like Twitter are creating unethical journalism.

“If you’re sitting there with a microphone on, you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy,” said Kelly McBride, an expert in journalism ethics for the Poynter Institute. “If you’re a governor or president, you know that.”

Although as a journalist your job is to report facts and events to inform the public, it is still important to build up trust with your contacts. As entertaining as it may be, the President calling a well known entertainer a jackass, it hardly seems to be the type of information the public NEED to know.

Some believe it is important to report on the Presidents comments, and that mediums such as Twitter are dangerous, as they can report events quickly and without the sort of monitoring that a news publication would have.

Twitter, a technology that’s a natural tool for reporters who love to tell people what they know whenever they know it, has raced ahead in usage before many news organisations have developed policies to govern its use, said Richard Wald, a former ABC News executive and professor at Columbia University.

“You need to reinforce the sense that you have to verify before you publish,” Wald said. “The policies may be very comprehensive, but they may not be adequate to the technology that news organisations have.”

Although Obama shares the same opinion on the incident as millions around the world, there are, and will be many more, critics of his comments. As the President should he be seen as a normal person who has an opinion on pop culture? Or shouold he only speak about these matters in the privacy of his own home where he isn’t likely to be Tweeted about?

Another issue altogether is who published the info and how- a shared recording of the interview, with the Tweeter unaware it was supposed to be off the record. Should information like this be used at the sole discretion of the interviewer, or should it be openly available for other employees as long as they understand what is and what is not available for circulation?

More questions yet to be answered as technology speeds ahead of the law. It will be interesting to see how this develops, and what the landmark cases will be.

Defamation on Twitter? Contempt of Court? Questions already thrown around but yet to be formally tested.

Story quotes taken from can be found here.