Newsbrief

Mike Wise wasn’t.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post sports columnist decided to tweet a fabricated claim that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger would be given a five game suspension by the NFL. Wise later said the erroneous tweet was his way of showing that “anybody will print anything.”

Well, he proved that people would pass along information if it comes from a reputable sports reporter, and that said sports writer will face a storm of criticism, admit on the radio that his gambit was a “stupid, irresponsible” idea, and be suspended for one month by his employer. A fantastic experiment, that one.

In the end, all Wise illustrated was that the credibility he has built up was easy to undermine. Here’s part of the apology he issued at the start of his radio program this week:

I didn’t put ‘kidding‘ in that sentence. I didn’t put ‘just joking.’ I could even say I thought I corrected it within five minutes and didn’t realize my Twitter server was busy 30 to 40 minutes later. But the truth is that if I waited one second to make my intentions and sourcing clear, I waited too long.

Wise’s transgression was even more notable because it occurred in the same city and featured the same (supposedly unreliable) platform as another event this week. When combined, they provide a tale of two Twitters and a case study of the disruptive nature of new media platforms. The new openness breeds a certain amount of chaos and unpredictability.

Wise seems to long for the old, closed world of media where the gatekeepers stood watch and the audience stayed silent. But when a gunman took hostages at the headquarters of the Discovery Channel this week, the news broke on Twitter. Along with the live feed of TBD TV, it was one of the best places to follow breaking news about the standoff.

From my latest column for Columbia Journalism Review.