Better yet, stop covering Twitter like it is news.
115
The bird symbol for Twitter is most apropos. Remember birds drop their excrement without thought wherever and whenever.
6
I always agreed with Betty White that Facebook is a huge waste of time. I am just not interested in the minutia of your life, and mine. Just not into all of your scrapbooking, sorry. If you are in my life, I know what you are up to. Twitter, do I really have to read your immediate reaction to whatever is on your mind? Ok once in a while I will read Trump's Twitter especially when he is having a meltdown and there are ten tweets in a row.....At 5am.....with weird capitalization, no logic and nicknames for everyone who doesn't feel he has the biggest brain ever. How else am I to learn that he has fallen in love with Kim Jong-un. With Fake News everywhere I turn, I simply must reassure myself that there "is no collusion". Our President wouldn't lie....oh wait. I think I'll stay off social media and let things sort themselves out the old fashion way.
4
If there was ever a golden moment in American history when "the media" were fair, accurate, absolutely non-partisan, then I am not aware of it. Before we hyperventilate about this new platform, let us note the ghost of William Randolph Hearst sitting in the corner, manufacturing a tidy little war, or--going back further--the various newspapers in the pockets of each Founding Father, trading insults and outright lies. Things change--just not so much.
Just yesterday, I read a piece, right here in the saintly NYT, that quoted stupifyingly dumb things that had been written a few years back by...the NYT editorial page. (A piece of cease-and-desist advice granted from on high to Martin Luther King Jr., believe it or not)
Yes, Twitter rewards those who are quick on the draw. But, as a survivor of journalism's Golden Age of throbbing presses, let me assure Mr. Manjoo and his readers that when the deadline (ominous term, fully deserved) approached, the reporter had better have his or her copy ready, in triplicate, no excuses, no mercy. Fully vetted, accurate, balanced? One could hope. Besides, there were always "corrections," buried on an inside page.
If you don’t Tweet don’t start. If you are addicted dial1-888- shutup for help now. Remember this stuff is not being transported across the border. It is home grown and The Wall cannot stop it!
3
Interesting oped. But it'll never happen. Most journalists will always search out the twit's and birdbrains. Better to boost the click through revenue and, therefore, their pay.
2
Twits tweet. And twits tweet twitticisms. Didn't you know this?
1
I just want to express my admiration for Mr. Manjoo's coining of a new word: "beclown". I don't get Twitter, and I never will. It is only good for comedians, because its format lends itself to joke writing.
1
Aphorisms without borders.
(I'll have to Tweet that.)
"I don’t care to litigate the events concerning the Covington kids." That's convenient, since the facts contradict Mr. Manjoo's entire thesis: nothing that has come out since the initial story contradicts the racist disrespect shown by a group of white teenagers wearing racist hats to a Native American adult. Mr. Manjoo is the one riding the tides of controversy by taking at face value the backlash and excuses. Racism is racism, and to take a stance of measured distance to it because of an unwillingness to respect the PR spin of white supremacy makes you complicit.
1
Twitter has always been for the weak of mind only. That the New York Times needs a columnist to remark on this is further proof of just how soft the paper has gone.
6
Presidents shouldn't tweet either. Especially at 4:30 AM. Especially when he is mad. Especially because he's bad at it.
1
I am not on Twitter and I don't have any other "Social Media" accounts.
I don't feel like I am missing anything. If there is anything really important the weather channel or the Times will let me know. I think my blood pressure has improved.
If other people feel compelled to be idiots, at the very least I don't have to watch.
1
Amen, brother.
1
So, Savannah Guthrie asks the Covington High School kid if the MAGA hat had something to do with the confrontation. Would she ask a rape victim if the short skirt she wore had something to do with the attack?
5
The problem with Covington was that so many *wanted* the initial characterization of events to be true. In that, they were abetted by Twitter. Having been singed by this one, are they going to back off and exercise self-restraint? No. Not while there remains person convinced that the MAGA hat equates to a swastika. Why? Because they *want* that to be true.
8
Wisest advice of the year: never react to what you read on Twitter! Or, anywhere else on social media.
(This is especially solid advicefor TEENS by the way. Our computer & social media titans don't let their kids HAVE Facebook or other accounts.)
The entire coastal progressive new- um, rumor and hearsay media took a giant, stupid step out on a high place getting behind the man now calling himself Nathan Phillips.
Having drunk enough to be one of my relatives, Phillips never fought in 'Nam but did defend refridgerators Back In The Day.
Phillips created the confrontation with those well-behaved teens but, to his credit, didn't sway or stagger. (Staying quiet - often the drinker's friend.)
But WHY did he take his merry little band and try to FORCE their way into a celebration of Mass in D.C.the very next evening?
1
Like phone apps that tell you when you're using your phone too much, articles imploring journalists to act more journalist-y are a sign of but one thing: we are doomed.
Twitter is also a time-waster --- just like Facebook.
4
Twitter and other "social" media vehicles should be BANNED as instruments of communication of any official policy statements or other government communications. If there are ANY adults left in the WH, somebody should pull the plug on the charger...
PLEASE!!!
1
To me, Twitter has always been the equivalent of a door-slamming, dramatic exit. Bullying and unhelpful.
2
Twitter should be restricted by law to people under age 18. It's fit for cute cat videos, photos of the newest outfit, or shared petulance about homework, period.
Another example of your premise: The point of last night's NPR story on this incident seemed to be that the confrontation received undue attention because it was retweeted by a fraudulent account. Then, as the story subsequently rose to the top of Twitterdom, the MSM felt obliged to cover it.
This NPR segment, focused on an anonymous tweeter as though s/he were a Russian bot, implied that the story itself was fake news. So in covering the story of why they were interested in the story, NPR managed to suggest that the story itself was not true. No, these kids *did* behave badly. But NPR inexplicably added on a layer of utter foolishness and disinformation by making their interest in the incident and how it came to be a stand-in for the actual news.
2
I have never had a Twitter, Facebook, or any social media accounts. What for? The NYT and many other high quality newpapers, magazines, and books provide more information then I could possibly consume. Social media to me seems to be a step in the direction of duming down.
The media seems to be doing a major mea culpa when it comes to that picture and video.
Don't.
In this case, what you see is what you get.
What positive intent could there possibly be for this entitled Kentucky teenager, Nick Sandmann, wearing a MAGA hat, to be standing there right in the face of the Indian elder and staring him down like a kid he's trying to bully at school?
There is none. Looking at the entire video only makes the Covington students look worse. Don't forget the part where they harassed some high school girls right before that happened.
No need for any apology from anyone. Although I really wonder what kind of students this school in Kentucky is unleashing on us. Future Mitch McConnells?
1
When I see news stories with multiple screen shots of tweets in them, I stop reading. Might as well write an article with four pictures of the sun and tell us it's never cloudy.
4
I don't understand what the problem is. Twitter is harmless if you opt out of a lot of things and don't use it as your primary source for full reporting. Make your account private. Do not tweet as if it's Facebook or iMessage. I never tweet. And, "follow" only the people you trust to deliver credible news, and just use it as the quickest way to see if something you care about just hit the news, and, for me.....I don't follow anyone who only "retweets" because that's how you get a lot of the junk from people you would never follow directly. I like it when I can see when a new WAPO or NYT piece has just been posted without having to go to their websites; then I can choose to go to the more broad article, and yes, subscribe to whatever digital or print versions you prefer.
I don't consider Twitter my primary source. It's more like a "hey, this just happened." And, then, if I am interested, I find a reputable source.
As far as the Covington story: with everything that's going on daily, much more significant, I had no interest in whether a kid wearing a MAGA hat was smirking (or not smirking) at an older Native American playing an instrument.
When do we decide to stop calling it "social" networking?
There are positive Twitter stories out there. The one that springs to mind is how the granddaughter of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church found her way out of that fetid swamp of a theology just by talking to people....on Twitter. It's not just about the platform, people have personal responsibility for how they use it.
14
Right on. And the media, if they REALLY wanted to get under Trump's skin, would collectively IGNORE his tweets. They cannot do it, however, because they have become co-dependent with the President. It's almost funny to watch.
5
I’ve watched lots of media and readers (too many for my liking) walk back their opinions about the Covington event. The event was indeed news. A definition of news I heard in high school was, “A spectacular event that is of interest to a large number of people.” This event fit that definition.
I have a Twitter account, and many of us that watched the mea culpas about responding too quickly – like The Atlantic’s Julie Irwin Zimmerman – weren’t buying it. The pushback from conservatives and right-leaning media was because the court of public opinion didn’t rule their way at first. So almost immediately we got counter-narratives from those sympathetic to Trump, to assuage those who thought those students had the right to do what they were doing. That the students were wearing MAGA hats – now a symbol of bigotry and a corrupt administration – didn’t help them.
The problem is not Twitter, it’s the news industry. The profit motive and fearfulness about the industry’s declining receipts in the Internet age have caused many organizations to go for the quick hit. To keep their fingers on the pulse, lots of majors regularly monitor social media to see what The Next Big Thing is going to be. Editors caught in the crossfire have to decide what to run and what to hold at a moment’s notice. In this Internet age where everything travels at the speed of light, that is not a simple task all the time.
I think the editor(s) that decided to run this as they did made the correct call.
2
"No one won; in the end the whole thing was little more than a divisive, partisan mess."
I'm not sure this is a proper description of either the sequence of events, or the outcome. Many commentators on the right, both on Twitter and formally in the form of posts to sites, attacked the kids as well. National Review, infamously, compared their actions to "spitting on the cross", before it later retracted the editorial in an apology post.
This was not a "partisan" issue, either at first or in the push back. The only ones making it seem as such are those on the left who have completely disengaged from conservative publications, writers, and, yes, accounts on Twitter -- and thus think "Team Blue" needs defending, when it's really "Team Journalists and Social Media" that warrants some soul-searching. Thankfully, this opinion piece does do that, but the above line in the piece felt faulty.
2
We are slowly destroying civilization; that is, if you believe we are civilized because of rational thoughtful consideration, debate, treatment of one another. Social media exists for its addictive quality and ability to create billionaires- not because it benefits our society
2
I got on Twitter late, and left early.
Though there is nothing quite like tearing off a perfect 280-character bon mot/summary of All That Is Wrong With America, Twitter is soul-killing. Every spare moment became the hunt for a Twitter-fueled dopamine fix. I wasn't paying attention to my family. I could scroll endlessly while I was supposed to be paying attention on conference calls.
2018 -- what I guess was My Year of Twitter -- is over. I deleted the app on New Year's Day. I don't know if my life is better, or my mind particularly more serene, but I do know I am not using Twitter anymore. And I really don't miss it.
4
Agree with all, Farhad, and your column should be tacked to readers' refrigerators as a daily reminder to be rational.
You are exactly right:
"The Covington saga illustrates how every day the media’s favorite social network tugs journalists deeper into the rip currents of tribal melodrama, short-circuiting our better instincts in favor of mob- and bot-driven groupthink."
Twitter is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is either black or white, left or right; there is no space for reasoned thought that can illuminate the gray areas of human discourse. And people now write that way in longer vehicles such as these posts. They have *no* extended thought.
Twitter makes people believe that they are thinking when they post something. It's the mass hypnosis that trump so effectively uses. Even paragraphs, such as this one, become shorter to cater to readers' brief spans of attention. They *can't* think.
Thus, it is in Twitter that trump dominates. Friends of mine believe that they can protest against trump in their tweets, but trump wins the day. Trump has lured them to their Twitter addiction. Twitter played a major role in the 2016 election cycle by reinforcing the weak thinking of the voter. Trump, a 70 year-old man then, found Twitter and used it better than any young person.
Culture will go down hill further if we don't reverse the fall and bring back educated thinking. Twitter is a disaster that encourages sloth.
2
Just because someone uses Twitter doesn't mean they have to use it in that way. I do use Twitter, but I did not even watch that video of the teens in MAGA hats mocking the elder because I could tell that it was not going to be worth it. You are that that incident, amplified by Twitter, was a divisive partisan mess.
However, Twitter can be useful. For example it saved the life of Rahaf Mohammed from the brutal Saudi regime. It can also connect people and help them learn things. It is merely a tool, and if people use it in the right way it can be good.
1
Twitter is just a tool to get a message out. It can be used wisely or not. At its best, it shares reasoned responses to issues and events. At its worst, it shares falsehoods and bias. Journalists must decide which one they wish to share and how often to use Twitter, just as they choose which matters to emphasize in their daily copy.
1
I never tweeted, or read tweets. No one I know does it. Oh, take that back, one distant relative, 22 years old, does. And no, I'm not tempted. Too many words out there anyway.
1
I 1st saw twitter when my IT boss was running it beta on his PC, not on a portable.
Never have I felt the need to use it.
And I still can't get away from it because 'journalists report tweets' is a real thing now. This is the final ring in H311.
2
I would go much further.
I would go beyond Never Tweet, to never use Facebook for political posts, and never engage in marches on Washington.
I say that having myself participated in a march on Washington a few years ago. It was fun meeting other people who shared my beliefs.
But the problem is that it is less important to convince others of your beliefs than to determine what issues you yourself want to support. And determining the side you want to be on in nontrivial.
We have become a nation in which reasoning has been replaced by slogans. On one side the slogan is "open borders." On the other, it is "build the wall."
The latter slogan is shutting down the government and denying paychecks to 800,000 government workers.
We desperately need an actual policy on which immigrants to admit under which circumstances. But achieving such a policy needs negotiation and compromise, not an endless series of photo-ops and repetitions of slogans.
Having seen the Athenians kill his mentor Socrates, Plato had a dim view of democracy. He favored an aristocracy with a ruling class that was trained to think of the good of all the people. Of his five regimes, democracy was fourth, just above tyranny.
People need to learn to accept that their judgments may sometimes be wrong. They need to seek the truth instead of convincing others. Sadly, American politics has been dominated by partisan polarization which makes compromise impossible.
2
Twitter is clearly the most powerful and effective propoganda mouthpiece of the president. His fingers on the keyboard are far more dangerous than any other person using it as a social media or journalistic platform.
Major geopolitical decisions (of recent, Syria, Turkey, and North Korea) which have far-reaching consequences are erratically announced to the world in a string of characters by a simple-minded charlatan without any in-depth knowledge of their repercussions. These chirps reveal a little man who constantly reveals his ineptitude to act on the world stage hiding instead behind-the-scenes with the false bravado of his tweets.Those tweets matter immensely and are carefully followed by our adversaries and allies alike in disbelief and consternation.
Twitter access in the hands of Donald Trump should not be dismissed nor underestimated. It is a serious and dangerous threat to our national security.
2
Dear NYT:
Farhad has been on the front lines of America's tech battles for many years, and his column is informed by his deep knowledge and experience of how tech is shaping -- or warping -- our culture.
Like so much created in Silicon Valley of late, Twitter is an addictive pastime that feeds our egos, juices our emotions, and creates the sense of a larger social reality.
Twitter provides a constant IV drip of fear and loathing to every media story that has the name "Trump" in it -- and they almost all do. This is most unhealthy, even if it generates clicks and keeps people reading.
As a fact-finding device, however, Twitter falls far short.
It is an ignorant game of telephone, in which the most hasty, most outlandish, "hot take" too often claims the prize.
The Russian social media manipulation in the 2016 election could not have happened but for our own deep cultural and political psychoses, which the trolls merely amped up.
Twitter's "mob- and bot-driven groupthink" has so thoroughly pervaded our public square that it is time for folks who still consider themselves journalists to step away from the show.
Let's reaffirm a belief in core journalistic principles -- finding a shared set of facts, being fair, disclosing bias.
Thanks, Farhad.
3
"I strive to be brief, and become obscure." Horace
Hence my preference for what some refer to as "text walls" over Twitter, a site where I've never posted. (If anyone is using the same screen name over there, it isn't me.) I feel obligated to write in a way that minimizes any opportunities for my words to be misunderstood or misconstrued.
I am reminded of an old Star Trek episode where Kirk and the Klingons are at each others throats due to an evil entity roaming the galaxy that feeds off of conflict. Once they realize that are being played for fools they (still disliking each other) throw down their weapons and let the entity know they figured out its game and won't play anymore. It is the only solution, but easier to write into a script that plays out on a federation starship than to implement on our heavily-populated starship planet.
5
It is with relief that I find something in the press that makes me feel a bit more hopeful. This is that something! Thank you Mr. Manjoo.
2
One problem which Frank Bruni brought up is We The Readers. What we click on and read we will receive more of. What the NYT assumes we like they give us more of. If we aren’t part of the solution we are part of the problem.
I avoid Twitter as much as possible, if not because it is a waste of time, then because every tweet can and will be used against you by future employment prospects, dating prospects, and courts. It is just a recipe for self-incrimination. Tweets by even the most well-meaning can easily be construed as sexist, homophobic, racist, or all of the above. Better to avoid putting irrevocable statements out there for all to pillory you.
2
Social media -- and especially Twitter -- have been promoted as modern-day means to "contribute to the conversation" in and about our age. To say that that aspiration has not been met is an understatement.
To be sure, there are occasional useful nuggets on Twitter. But, fundamentally, Twitter and most social media do not contribute to "conversation" because, frankly, there is no conversation any more ... or darned little of it. We have devolved from the letter to the postcard to the email and most recently to Twitter, texts and Snaps (the very definition of ephemera). And that devolution has been accompanied (chicken or egg, I wonder?) by a devolution in conversation, which is -- or should be -- an honest exchange of ideas by people reaching out in good faith to one another.
We don't have conversation anymore. It is rare these days to witness a good faith exchange of thoughts, especially where the recipients are not already firmly within the speaker's social, political or cultural clan. And it is practically extinct on the Internet, where good faith is an absurdity and communication seems primarily to exist as a means of being first, scoring points, hurling clever zingers, projecting virtue, and harming those with whom we do not agree.
Makes me want to write a letter. But who would read it?
2
Up until 20 years ago or so, we received the bulk of our news through mainstream media such as traditional newspapers and TV. This news was produced by professional journalists who were trained in their craft and who adhered to professional standards.
Now, our technology gives every person two new powers, which can be good or bad. First, technology gives you the power to gather your own news selectively from an ever-increasing variety of outlets. This can enrich your news-viewing experience, although it also intensifies the throwing of people into tribes—liberals tend to only view news from liberal sources, conservatives from conservative sources, nuts from nutty sources, etc.
And second, now each of us can BE a journalist. We can all use Twitter and Facebook to publish our own news and help disseminate the publications of others. So with the sad Covington story millions of people got a story that was published originally off someone's phone, and the professional journalists wound up playing catch-up.
Of course, this way of doing business can fuel the spread of lies and fake news, and sadly the biggest perpetrator of these lies is the President of the United States.
I thank Mr. Manjoo for raising this issue, but I don't see a way to stuff this genie back in his bottle. However, it would be great if 2020 presidential candidates would vow that as president they won't lie to us, and possibly subscribe to something like a panel of journalists to regulate their comments.
1
You call Twitter comically undermanaged (OK, almost comically undermanaged.) You can add most of media to this list, Fox, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, Washington Post, NYTimes; on and on. Our country's political health has lost ground during the Trump presidency but not as much as the news media. Our free press is not so free and weekly faux pas by the media makes it worse.
2
Social media has reduced adults to teenagers who think everything they see is real,because it was on the internet. Everyone believes they are the center of the universe. Stupidity becomes exhausting. Lets all grow up and leave our fake outrage in the past.
Get off of social media, and think.
3
I’m leery anytime someone tells me to completely stop doing something that is superficially innocuous, like Twitter. I’m capable of sniffing out most fraudulent tweets, and to block rabid racists, vulgar trolls, even Twitter sites that might be Russian dominated. I expect I could have done the same thing during the Pulitzer-Hearst days of “yellow journalism.” Weakness of will seems to be Mr. Manjoo’s problem. Ah, if the world of journalism was less murky, things more clear, values of journalism explicit and, of course, right. These things will not happen by having journalism quit Twitter. It will take journalists with spine, who know the special unwritten rules of proper Twitter self-vetting to navigate these sometimes treacherous media waters. I hope Mr. Manjoo stiffens is now slouching stance. I’m sure he’s capable of Tweeting and being a professional journalist at the same time.
3
No, Twitter is not ruining journalism. Wall Street greed has crippled journalism in America by decimating newsrooms from coast to coast with murderous cutbacks.
Hedge fund brigands like Alden Global Capital are destroying the people's access to civic knowledge by their rapacious plundering of news sources from coast to coast. It is capitalism without a conscience, and it is destroying democracy.
Twitter, in fact, has become a light in the darkness for those of us in middle America who are trying to stay informed about our own communities when our local newspapers have been eaten away by this cancer of capitalist greed. Our news reporters are our fellow social media users.
If Manjoo cannot separate the wheat from the chaff, the meat from the garbage, then he is right to stay away from Twitter — and all other sources that don't spoonfeed him pre-digested pabulum. The crazies on Twitter are easily identified if one cares to do a few minutes of intelligent analysis. No one is obligated to join an online mob, or immediately retweet a piece if news that hasn't been verified.
No, sir, I hope news reporters stay active — very active — on Twitter. If responsible newspersons don't, then all we'll be left with is the nutjobs and propaganda bots.
Keep talking to us, Twitter. You're the voice of the people.
1
You get a sharper take if you acknowledge that the first impression was right on the essentials and that the subsequent flood of "context" successfully muddied the waters. Further evidence need not be counter-evidence.
The unfixable problem with Twitter is that it is easily manipulated. Ask RunSwitch, the PR firm hired as Sandmann's media advisors. It becomes another adjunct to what we might call the de-information mill, which grinds facts into a fine paste that tastes exactly the way you want it to taste.
Unchecked bias is ruining journalism. Twitter is just an accelerant. When journalism decides to get out of the business of doing black opposition research, and most outlets do it for for one party, trust may be able to be rebuilt. For now, journalists should be grateful for Twitter. The Covington hot take and tweet mob it created distracted completely from the serious matter of the SC denying the widely reported and embraced Buzzfeed report.
I'm still amazed Twitter doesn't have the guts to shut-down Trump's account because of bullying and intentionally spreading lies. Twitter is weak. Can't any of the Social Media companies do *anything* just because it's the right thing to do??
1
Leaving Twitter is like taking your hand out of a bucket of water and measuring the space left behind. Conversely, not having Twitter in your life has the same effect... no measurable space left behind.
In fact, taking your hand out of that Twitter bucket (don't forget to wash well with anti-bacterial soap) frees you up to engage with deeper, more satisfying and more intellectually nutritious forms of discourse and social interaction.
I've never had a Twitter account and never will, so it could be I don't know what I'm talking about. But I did have a Facebook account until last month, when I 86'd it. Yesterday I got a phone call from a friend who said he couldn't find me on Fb, so he had to call instead. We talked for an hour.
Pull your hand out of the bucket, and don't sit there dabbling your fingers in it. You won't miss it, and it won't miss you.
I should say right up front that I really love Twitter. But it really seems to be just what Farhad suggests, a dangerous pool of free-flowing anger and outrage. I have long wondered if Twitter and other social platforms tap the same parts of the brain that cigarettes do. And we all know those are bad for you!
As a culture, we have replaced quality journalism with 'going viral'.
3
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes you can trust your eyes. Sometimes you can wait and listen to the two people involved.
The veteran forgave the young man but believed the boy's tv appearance was coached by a pr firm hired by his parents. He seriously doubted the boy's sincerity.
Examine the kid's interview on tv, with clothing a bit too large, with a camera angle taken from above, with just the right lighting.
A picture is worth a thousand words. The picture of a privileged teen wearing a racist cap, a smirk on his face, refusing to move is enough for me.
Of course, he goes to a Catholic school and religion makes everything okay. You can hate gays but if it's against your religion to bake a cake for a gay wedding, then it's fine.
3
The same fundamental attributes baked into Twitter that make it destructive of journalism make it equally destructive of all other forms of conversation, inquiry, and citizenship.
Twitter is the quintessential example of how there's a radical difference between "changing the world" and improving it.
I read an article last week - can't recall where - about how the children of the social media age are asking their parents to take down the photos they have posted of them since birth. Even pre-teens can appreciate the vast invasion of their privacy that their parents have perpetrated on them since the age of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others.
So, Farhad, I can't agree with you more. However, it would require all of us to just stop. I don't know how many Covington students (I want to use a harsher description, but I'll resist the temptation) tweeted videos of the incidents. The reality is that it takes only one tweeted or Facebooked or Instagrammed or YouTubedvideo to cause the furor that ensured from that incident.
That doesn't help, I know. That genie is out of the lamp. That horse has left the barn. That water is well under the bridge. And, sadly, the demands of the 24x7 news cycle require that videos of that kind - or of police abuse - are posted asap without the time needed to obtain additional videos, to investigate the incident more fully, to report it as it might once have been reported by genuine, trained, professional journalists.
I would provide this counter-argument to ignoring Twitter. It has become an arena where fact-checking can be crowd-sourced. Provided we don't lose our minds and emotions in the heat of the moment, the eventual truth comes out of the mess, even if it is grey and not black & white.
The only thing we have to learn is the intelligence (emotional maturity?) to handle and filter a broad range of perspectives without losing our minds. That's not Twitter's responsibility but something the schools and society should address. Why can't we talk about that in these rancorous times?
Something to consider..if these boys had been raised properly and taught properly, they would have removed their caps and offered handshakes to this Native American gentleman.
We, all of us, have lost respect for each other. Civility and good manners are extensions of respect and they do not exist in us anymore.
Those children could have and should have behaved better. Shame on their parents and teachers!
Years ago I reluctantly signed onto Twitter and the next day they sent me a message saying that my account may have been compromised. It was like the heavens opened up with a voice telling me that I was right and to get out. not sign up again. I am sure that there is some good stuff but why in the world do I care about the opinions of people who aren't important in my life.
Two decades ago, a U.S. movie came out, "Quiz Show" about the 1950s scandal of rigged quiz shows on TV, with real people who'd been coached on what to say.
At the end of the flick, the investigator from a congressional office, Ricard Goodwin, (historian Doris Goodwin's late husband)
said of the investigation: "We thought we were gonna expose TV for what it was (corrupting); but TV's gonna get us instead." (paraphrase)
Flash forward: the same has happened with Twitter. This says something about hi-technology's inevitable course in human affairs.
I don't intend to stop tweeting as I have never seen the point of twitter. I do not have an account.
It has saved me a huge amount of time and effort.
1
What disturbs establishment journalists is not the content of social media, accurate or not, but the fact that stories can reach a national public bypassing the traditional media gatekeepers who would determine which stories were newsworthy in the past . . . . For example, police brutality has been going on for a long time & was always of great concern in minority neighborhoods. But it wasn't until the "cop cam" videos became available for all to view did the attacks--that once were covered up by the police and the press--become a national issue & gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.
1
Or to put it differently, we expect more from journalists other than amplifying social media madness. If I want immediacy I can use Twitter all by myself. I look to journalists for measured clarity and insight.
3
Bottom Line: The President of the United States, Donald Trump, is fully responsible for creating the hateful MAGA hat culture. He finds the divisiveness, regardless of who is at fault in any particular instance, very useful.
Trump's calculated use of divisiveness belies his inaugural address: "The Bible tells us, 'how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.' "
"We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity. When America is united, America is totally unstoppable."
Newsflash with irony: Trump himself stopped America with his government shutdown.
The immaturely ugly (and weak) "power fist" that Trump presented as he emerged from the Capitol to take his oath of office in 2016 was but the first calculated step on his way to deliberately dividing the country.
As Ross Douthat observed in his NYTimes column this week, MAGA hats are toxic and divisive. The hats are one of the most useful tools in Trump's ongoing ego trip and march to dismantle America.
MAGA hats are just another kind of wall, right here inside the country, not on the border. Put one on, and you are helping to build that wall.
3
Why don’t professional journalists with all their standards simply not react to twitter until they have reasoned facts to support their position. Imagine if a doctor was tweeting cures for diseases that were completely fabricated and I turn accepted patients. Proper outrage would result. The employers of these journalists have a responsibility to manage their employees even if their not publishing their misinformation on their platform. Otherwise they aren’t journalists at all, just pundits from entertainment tonight.
2
For anyone who hasn't read it, I highly recommend this thorough analysis in The Atlantic of the way the Covington Kids story was covered, especially by CNN and the Times.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/media-must-learn-covington-catholic-story/581035/
And for the writers and editors of the Times, I especially recommend a careful review of the three concluding paragraphs.
The problem is not just the use of Twitter. It is the utter abandonment of any semblance of journalistic ethics by the Times, CNN and others in the MSM.
Remember what former Senator Alan Simpson said at G.W.H. Bush's funeral about hate corroding the vessel in which it is carried.
1
@Frank
Thanks. Just finished The Atlantic article that you referenced. Quite revealing how much the reporting on this story was over the top from the git-go.
So much of what we call journalism is just copy and paste from social media. NY Times is better about this than a lot of outlets but not immune. My rule is this: if I begin to read something and the writer has copied and pasted a social media post into the body of the article, I immediately hit "back" and look for something else. Copy and paste journalism is lazy and sloppy and I refuse to click on it. And don't get mes started with writers who insert # in front of words. That's just atrocious. My 7th grade teacher back in Nashville, Mrs. June Bowen, would have sent me to detention for that!
Nothing more annoying than to see a news story filled with mindless twitter screen captures. Want to know what the average American thinks? Go talk to them! Journalists have become incredibly lazy, citing twitter like it's some indisputable pulse of America. Haven't Russian trolls taught journalists anything yet? Stop sourcing from Facebook, twitter and other idiotic channels and start making calls and hitting the pavements!
Twitter has its place, as a way to express one's opinions and beliefs. But the Covington Catholic video shows how real news, with complex interactions that are way too complicated and nuanced to be made understandable is so difficult. Even if we were there watching, studies of perception show we would have missed details that were crucial to understanding what happened without prejudice, priming, preconceptions, pasted on beliefs or misinterpretations. Twitter does not replace good journalism that explains events that happened. It only allows people to express opinions about events and this has essentially limited value to us asundividual, and as a society. Opinions and beliefs about things are fine, but they arent always factual. People used to believe the earth is flat. So much for the value of opionion, which like fashion comes and goes and changes. Journalism is supposed to be about facts.
You're not being hard enough on yourself. Two major fake news stories in a row, Buzzfeed and Covington, with real world consequences. House members were ready to impeach and the innocent students are under physical threat. Hatred has blinded you. Why should I believe the next story?
3
To be clear, Twitter does nothing, but some number of its users default to toxic behavior. Only journalists can ruin journalism.
I don't Twitter or Tweet, and would welcome a 2020 presidential candidate that didn't either. Twitter is Silly.
3
I am alarmed that a bunch of white, Catholic, prep school boys wearing MAGA hats loudly participated in an anti-abortion rally, in a time when women's rights are under siege. Privacy rights are endangered because our courts are being packed by a rogue president who is using a non-elected body-- the Federalist Society-- to choose candidates for an important third rail of our constitutional system; who are then unquestionably and instantly approved by an elected body--the Senate-- which based on changed demographics, represents only a small minority of Americans. I am equally alarmed that some members of this obnoxious group will soon sit on the very courts I am so concerned about, because the Federalist Society has decided that our judicial system should be stuffed with alums of white, Catholic, boys prep schools. The minor (and passing) parts of this story are the tolls who I guess taunted the boys; the native American who I guess is perhaps a little "off; " and that this story exploded on social media and has now absorbed as many Americans (including journalists) as it has. And meanwhile, no journalist is looking at the real story: this type of boy will become the men who are bent on the destruction of our democracy, so they can hang on to the power to which they feel entitled. Twitter away, America!
@karen
They have the same right every citizen has to be heard on this issue. We must resist liberal feminism's transparent attempt to privatize this issue, removing it from the public sphere.
First is not best.
What a preposterous bunch of luddites! Twitter is unmediated. This is invaluable in a world where governments, corporations, and billionaires all have a hand in manufacturing what we experience as the news. Especially for perspectives outside the Overton Window, or beyond those that editors decree are the issues of the day.
It also allows responses to dunderheaded Op Eds that can eclipse the original. That's more democratic and participatory than anything you'll find in print – how often do you see columnists wading into the comments sections in the Times? It's preposterous that someone like Friedman or Kristol can air their views, as if from on high, without also elevating their well-deserved shredding.
Yes, backwards views can find their niche and reinforce each other on Twitter, but that is inarguably also true of televised media. There is an entire outrage industry designed to make people angry instead of thoughtful. At the end of the day, media is only as sophisticated as the user. Anybody complaining about the platform just seems old.
1
When twitter came out I acted superior to such foolishness and didn’t sign up. But the real reason was that I knew that unless I could lock in a 24 hour delay and give someone else the key, I would make a total fool of myself.
I’m a bit disappointed to see such a group think mentality reading through these comments. The responses here and the article all seem to say that twitter (and other social media) is bad, dangerous even. But isn’t that neglecting to take into account the values of these platforms?
Social media allows for workers to separate their audience and work from their publication/business, something that is important in a time where so many industries don’t guarantee job security. Twitter allows creatives to build audiences in different social spheres. Social media allows for citizen journalism on a large platform, and voices of the public are hugely important to have alongside publication voices.
I find it to be a bit of a privilege to look at twitter and believe it can be dropped. That view seems to ignore how many people can’t do that without losing some of their livelihood, whether that is taking part in political action or paying for medical bills.
1
@Waverly I think if your job clearly states that you must use twitter to keep the job, it's ok. But that is maybe 2% of jobs in America, and journalism is definitely not one of them.
If not using twitter is a sign of "privilege" then there were a lot of privileged people around 15 years ago, the entire world in fact.
Certainly Trump's incessant and narcistic use of his Twitter feed has done nothing but inflame political sensibilities and increase Twitter's visibility & use. Twitter encourages snap judgments and preconceived ideas without any foundation or support. It is particularly pernicious when it becomes the foundation for national attention and television coverage.
The Covington Boys is a perfect example of (1) jumping to a conclusion without sufficient inquiry; (2) supporting a biased view of events; and (3) nationalizing an entirely local event that would normally only be worthy of minimal attention.
The fact is that the national media is all too ready to swarm report any incident which smacks of racial or ethnic prejudice wherever it might allegedly exist. The Covington kids are just that, kids, now caught up in a media sensation not of their own making. They have been vilified for no reason whatsoever and just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. The media wants to place the burden on them to apologize for something they did not do. They were well behaved kids following the instructions of their adult chaperone.
Why do so many in the media immediately and without thought, presume the worst from white male Catholic kids who are there to show support for the Pro Life movement. Is this just another example of media bias that has contributed to the electorate's disgust for the way it publishes the news?
4
The problem with Twitter is it's inescapable in terms of its influence on our desire to stay informed. It seeps out of the pores of even the best news source.
I don't have Twitter, but I know what Trump or Alyssa Milano or other 80s stars who I'd otherwise have forgotten about feel Tweet or Twit about this that and the other because major news sources report these impulsive narcissistic rants in their news articles. Tweets become news because of Fox and CNN and, yes, the NYT.
I can live without Facebook or Snapchat or Instagram--sadly, no matter how much I'd love to, I can't seem to escape the Twitter. Its stink taints everything, even what I consider reliable news sources (NYT, WaPo, WSJ, etc).
1
Twitter is the biggest echo chamber ever invented. To stop the echo, stop the tweet. Really, no one out here in reality land cares about twitter except the media.
1
"The Revolution will not be televised" . . . Because it will be on Social Media!
Yep. You said it. Thank you. I can only hope that more people will get tired of the divisive outrage-machine and log off too.
1
Tis' a sad day that the language of Shakespeare has devolved into a 140 character meme filled character assassination, however the simple fix is not just to take the high road, but to bring along as many as possible.
You give breath to hatred, misogyny, racism, and whole host of other ills of society by giving it a platform.
One only need look at the President and how he leads the press around by the nose each and every news cycle. (or after each and every tweet) Why is that ?
The press and we, give the dividers a platform every time we acknowledge, repeat over and over, and then ultimately try to respond in kind on their level.
The digital realm is not real - simply ignore.
3
I'm chortling gleefully, as I have done with Mr. Manjoo's column, over the Fourth Estate desperately trying to convince us...or is that convince themselves...that they've gotten the message.
The mea culpia, as amusing as they are, are meaningless. It's what the Fourth Estate does in the future that is what will demonstrate whether or not the message has been received.
What most of the working press today has failed to realize is that Trump's accusations of "fake news" are far more accurate than their egos are able to allow them to admit.
The Covington high-schooler fiasco is just the latest in a string that illustrates the press' political hatreds and mob mentality
1
In all the condemnation of those reporters, commentators, and politicians, et al, who jumped all over this story based on initial "reporting" and one photo, there has been perhaps the most central problem for many of them. Sure, most are opinionated and their "reporting" is shaped by their political views. That's been the norm for a long time. No, worse, they are simply not professionals--or professional. Many are simply lazy, sloppy in their reporting and analysis, and very careless. That's now a very wide problem. Most could not be bothered to do even the most basic part of their job--to verify the truth with multiple sources and in consultation with wise or informed people. That's too hard for many, and certainly less satisfying than condemning some kid in a red hat. And yes, stay off Twitter....always good advice.
2
Tis' a sad day that the language of Shakespeare has devolved into a 140 character meme filled character assassination, however the simple fix is not just to take the high road, but to bring along as many as possible.
You give breath to hatred, misogyny, racism, and whole host of other ills of society by giving it a platform.
One only need look at the President and how he leads the press around by the nose each and every news cycle. (or after each and every tweet) Why is that ?
The press and we, give the dividers a platform every time we acknowledge, repeat over and over, and then ultimately try to respond in kind on their level.
The digital realm is not real - simply ignore .
1
Never succumbed to the temptation to open a Twitter account because in an era of dismemberment of US English (where have all the adverbs gone?), I couldn't support the possibility of contributing to that decline. And when I read the "new" format in which news articles embed tweets from semi-informed individuals with marginal expertise on a topic, my decision is affirmed. Naturally, the president's cheeky Twitter drivel also provided affirmation.
Any medium that does not offer the room to create series of parallel, subordinate clauses, the space to create subjoined parts of an argument, that does not permit one to think complex thoughts out to a reasonable conclusion is a waste of my limited and precious time on earth.
2
JFK: "Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
3
Yes, quit all social media. Just do it. Until recently, social media didn't even exist and people lived full, productive lives, without all the artificial stress and false illusions of amazing progress
1
I am probably one of very few who believed from the “start” that news outlets, broadcast news, and serious journalists should never have joined Social Media. It was originally designed and thought of as promoting friendly and familial companionship. Just because celebrities glommed on to promote themselves was no excuse for news outlets to embrace Twitter, FB, etc. As for those who would point to social media promoting pro-democratic political movements I would what was dubbed “the Arab Spring” was anything but and there are now even more hate groups and anti-democratic voices using social media to destroy the social fabric that sustains us. Would anyone take a class in which the “teacher” knew nothing about the subject being “taught ?” Well, that’s the “faculty” journalists have become by signing on to Social Media. A free press, the cornerstone of our democracy, is supposed to inform and educate! Not incite and mislead. It takes time to research and write cogently and a lot more than 144 characters.
1
I cancelled twitter. Too much data-free analysis.
The real crisis is in journalism itself -- twitter is simply a communication platform. Not everything on twitter is journalism, and when journalists do not fact check a story and gather corroborative evidence but attach their byline to it anyway (for all the reasons well-stated in the article) the public begins to forget the distinction of journalism versus rumor-mongering and gossip. The additional curse of today is that so many journalists are prone to throwing off the mantle of objective reporting in favor of injecting their own political biases -- reflected in many instances of characterizing behavior as opinion vs. fact (i.e. the students "harassed" the drummer vs. "locked eyes for several minutes").
The distinctions of good journalism matter a very great deal -- it is what makes the 4th estate essential to democracy. It is just as corrosive to our society when journalism is not done with diligence and objectivity as when a justice of the court performs his/her duties in a sloppy and subjective way by disregarding facts and laws and injecting biases into judgements.
So go ahead and use twitter to promote journalism -- just make sure it is journalism that you are promoting.
2
Resist the urge to Tweet your latest brilliant neuron excitation, everyone — please! Let the acetylcholine rush subside.
More glad every day I never joined Twitter, Facebook, etc. Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg have done more to undermine America than anyone else, including Trump (he's only the loudest Twit). If I ever found myself next to either of these Titans of Tech in a restaurant or coffee shop here in SF, I'd just ask "WHY?" Of course, they're in the armored limo crowd now, so little to no chance of that happening either.
Innovation doesn't always mean Progress, does it?
If you want people to stop tweeting, remove the Twitter icon from the NYT website. I don't tweet for the reasons your article mention, and I've weaned myself off any social media, including LinkedIn (which is the domain of con artists these days) but Instagram since my children use it.
Honestly, I've never had a Twitter account. And honestly, I have never been able to fathom how, or why, it has come to dominate news as it has. All I can say that his has become a nation, and I guess even a world, of incredibly gullible, and in a way desperate (in respect to getting there first), people - news reporters among them. I'm happy to hear that you are disengaging, and all we can hope for is that the rest of your news reporter brethren do the same. The damage that has been done to the credibility of news reporting (from EVERY publication, broadcast, etc., NYTimes included) is large to say the least, and is getting worse. If you want to reverse this trend, all news reporters and journalists need to disengage, and do so NOW. There is no reason for a truly credible and professional journalist or reporter, to use Twitter.
@CC in Western NY, I beg to differ. Now retired after more than three decades as a reporter, editor and publisher, I can declare without reservation that the ruination of journalism is not social media. The ruination of journalism is the unconscionable destruction of newsrooms and resources from coast to coast by the monstrous greed of Wall Street capitalists.
Alden Global Capital, for example, buys up newspaper properties and strips them of their ability to continue as community news sources. Journalism is at the heart of democracy, serving an informed public. It's why a free press was considered essential by the framers of our Constitution. Plunderers like Alden are attacking a cornerstone of our democracy in the name of private profit.
Twitter is basically an unedited source of news. Unedited sources is all we'll have left when Wall Street robber barons finish devouring the free press and then dance away to their private island retreats while our democracy goes up in flames.
Wall Street robber barons finish devouring the free press and then dance away to their private island retreats while our democracy goes up in flames.
1
If Mrs. Clinton was our President now, our government would be open for business and nobody would be talking about what she posted on Twitter this morning.
3
I'd like to speak up in defense of social media. Pick and choose what you want -- or ignore it all -- but where else but Twitter can you get the hourly/daily thoughts of your senator, your president, leading scientists, famous athletes, well known writers and (if that's your thing) celebrities. Facebook is a good way to keep somewhat in touch with people you'd otherwise only hear from once a year and, eventually, not even then. No one's forcing anyone to use social media, and, yeah, people write some dumb things. I certainly do. But humans have said and written dumb things for our entire existence, and whatever technology comes along next will provide further proof.
This hand-wringing is nothing new. It happened with usenet, with email, with voice mail, and now with Facebook, Twitter and the others. I suspect it happened when books were first written, newspapers published, and telephones and television became commonplace. We figured out how to use all of those -- we'll figure out social media too.
So, no, I do not think it's safe to say that Twitter and other social media sites are doing more harm than good, as Lost in Translation from WA wrote.
1
Tis' a sad day that the language of Shakespeare has devolved into a 140 character meme filled character assassination, however the simple fix is not just to take the high road, but to bring along as many as possible.
You give breath to hatred, misogyny, racism, and whole host of other ills of society by giving it a platform.
One only need look at the President and how he leads the press around by the nose each and every news cycle. (or after each and every tweet) Why is that ?
The press and we, give the dividers a platform every time we acknowledge, repeat over and over, and then ultimately try to respond in kind on their level.
The digital realm is not real - simply ignore ...
90
@FunkyIrishman Agree with you completely. I have never used Twitter or Facebook. I can't understand why anyone would use them.
8
@Judy
I have never used Facebook ( I am up to date with high school friends) , but occasionally have used Twitter (just for fun)
I can post the most benign comments, or even just photos and little eggs come out of the woodwork to put down me Irish heritage. It's quite funny actually.
At any rate, life is too short to worry or bother about people or bots that just don't get that simple fact.
Have a great day !
2
Thank you for this piece. Over the last few years Twitter has morphed from being a platform to share news to being used as a crowd-sourcing tool to create news. Twitter makes the unimportant important. How many news cycles have been dominated by a Tweet or "reactions on Twitter"? The Covington case began when an anonymous user (account has been suspended) posted the video clip. From there a network of other anonymous and bot accounts boosted the Tweet until it reached the visibility of credited journalists and news personalities and public figures.
I agree with this author - Twitter shows signs of being a ruinous factor in today's society. I've always questioned the platform's ability to convey, in 140 - 280 characters, the coherent thoughts of anyone with a serious message to convey. Something gets lost in translation. Thoughts are misconstrued. Unintended consequences ensue. Instant judgements are made, only to be regretted later. And, here's the worst part - because they are instant messages, there is no taking them back, not completely.
And as for being an intelligent way for a president to impart his (or her) thoughts on important matters of state - Twitter is the worst possible platform. As Trump has shown us, churlish messages sent in the heat of disagreement, especially those sent in the middle of the night, can reveal a president incapable of critical thought and disciplined discourse.
5
What makes the whole social media problem even worse is the simple fact that the social media audience is self-selected. The people who use social media are those who already have a need for immediate self-gratification and dopamine-induced instant feedback. It is a self-reinforcing universe.
As the comments on here are indicating, many of us have deliberately chosen not to go on social media, precisely because we dislike the accelerated time frame, stress, distraction and intensity.
I even disabled my NYT news app because I was so annoyed at the constant 15-minute buzzing interruptions and "breaking news" headlines, almost always stories about Trump, presumably because we are all so addicted to any news about Trump.
This self-selection process makes the feedback loop even tighter and more intense. The only way to stop the social media merry-go-round is to get off of it. It shouldn't be that hard to do.
I am looking forward to the day when the cable news networks will start using "Not Breaking News" headlines.
4
I have been calling social media asocial media because they give everybody a platform to vent and attack without thinking. They should be held accountable for the content they spread, just like any newspaper or conventional media. Having said this, I don't understand why anybody is using twitter. Almost 100% of what goes on there is a waste of time and energy even though it seems that people who use it including CEOs and journalists may think their messages and tweets are the deepest insights since the Neanderthalers.
4
Twitter enables people to have too strong of a voice to those who definitely should not - and anonymously - so even worse for enabling bad behavior.
2
So often I read full articles on subjects about which I have significant expertise, and so often these articles have errors in them. All journalism is tough, good journalism especially so. How does one explain what one doesn't fundamentally understand? That's the journalist's challenge.
So how does it make sense that anything expressed in 140 characters (or whatever finite amount is the limit these days) is meaningful? Sure, it may have impact. We like that, don't we? Give us a hard-hitting sentence or two that appeals to our preconceptions, a simple answer to a very complicated question, and we think we know something. We don't. We merely have an opinion; reinforced by others, perhaps, but just an opinion.
I've never used Twitter, and my Instagram page is a professional necessity as a part-time photojournalist--all images of professional and adventure sports, but none of me. Facebook I have. My last post was back in October, when I posted a dozen pretty images of canyoneering in Utah.
But who cares about the minutia of daily life? I have friends and relatives who post their every thought, brag about their (often very uninteresting) lives. It's a veneer, carefully curated it appears, to invite social confirmation. The more 'likes' we have, the better we must be doing in life. As if we are nothing if others don't validate us. Social media is a drug that validates. And like all drugs, it has unwanted side effects.
10
The biggest problem with Twitter is that it makes what shouldn’t matter, matter. Not by virtue of the tweet, but rather, the response to the tweet. Stop the tweets and we will have less hysteria, but we won’t be less informed.
4
I was disappointed when the story became about what happened on social media, and not what actually happened at the event. The media failed to inform, educate, or provide an objective look at "what happened" ...The optics I saw reminded me of adults and teens screaming at black students trying to go to school in the 50's. I would also have liked to understand the actual event, and not what craziness social media comes up with.
1
Thank you for writing this important column. I hope your colleagues in the media will disengage themselves from tweets long enough to read something reasoned and important. Our government officials could benefit from heeding this message as well.
8
I was the same way re: Facebook, which is a maelstrom of invective and sameness. I haven't posted since October, though I still use it for my dog rescue, and I feel so much better. I started to get involved with Twitter and found the same addiction that I had had wanting 'LIKES' and 'SHARES', on Twitter. I now resolve to, like you, lurk more, tweet less. Thank you for the object lesson. Thankfully, I have never used Instagram.
4
Twitter and Facebook clearly have a negative affect on discourse and rational thought, but they are also the new public square. I’m not sure that letting the trolls takeover is the answer.
2
Bravo, and a resounding "yes please" from this random user. Twitter is a social gossip site by design. Our President and our press should not obsess over it like they do.
5
Better yet, "Never Tweeted." Alas! The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.
8
I agree! I was concerned the first time I saw the NYT report on a Trump tweet and I knew it wasn't going to be good. Be the change you wish to see in the world and ignore Twitter!!!
2
The New York Times can do its part too. Instead of peppering articles with embedded tweets by whichever random person has the strongest opinion, journalists could instead pick up their phones and get quotes from people actually connected to the story.
21
@James
Agreed. The Twitter in the middle of the article thing is abhorrent.
1
I have a twitter address, but I have never used it. Somehow I get Trump’s tweets. I ignore Trumps tweets. Never read them. I even dread opening this newspaper everyday because of the great possibility there will be another photo of Trump glaring out from the Top Stories page ! I made a vow just recently to send paper birthday cards to those I care about.
Once I get to the point of not screaming at phone robots I will considr myself “recovered” !
3
I think you are right on the money. Journalists have given twitter and our enemies so much power. I can't believe the daily abuse we get from the President, clearly in violation of its "rules" for others. Personally, I keep up with politicians' statements and it is useful for links to articles.
I hope they take your advice!
4
Good column and I agree with you totally. Off the cuff tweets from the media are only going to make all of you less credible in the eyes of the public.
Take time to tweet or not to tweet, that is the answer. As you pointed out, there are too many knee-jerk reactions to what goes viral out there.
Another thing I am sick to death of 'this has gone viral, that has gone viral'. Enough is enough, get a life. A real life.
5
I cannot remember my password, so I use the very simple method: delete, for all Twitter posts. I also want nothing to do with trump, so I avoid it like the plague.
2
I think it is safe to say that Twitter and other social media sites are doing more harm than good. I don't have accounts on Facebook or Twitter. I already spend enough time reading comment sections like this one and I wouldn't be surprised if I spend more time on a smartphone than I ever did watching TV as a kid. The internet has degraded the quality of everything written. I can't count the number of times I have seen entire paragraphs repeated in articles (even in this newspaper). It all has to go out too quickly because it may be obsolete before the author finishes typing. And now we have a president trying to run the country by Twitter.
Disturbing.
149
@Lost in Translation
There is a ton of good stuff on Twitter in science, tech, oceanography, etc, etc. just avoid the politics.
8
@Lost...
It's not Twitter that is lost. The people who use it are the ones that are wandering in the wilderness.
This is not to say that Twitter is an innocent bystander. It isn't. Twitter is an enabler, even an encourager, of shallow thinking and the "sound byte" mentality that has gripped the world in the digital age.
The people commit the crime, not the platform.
3
Running and ruining the country by Twitter.
6
Whatever happened to reporters? Now everyone is a "journalist" with an opinion. If instead these journalists referred to themselves as "reporters," they might feel more inclined to search for facts.
9
I couldn't agree more, Farhad.
5
How about you keep visiting Twitter but stop carrying water for a right-wing PR firm? Which of those, do you think, constitutes a worse violation of journalistic ideals?
1
My religion [Common Sense] forbids me from using Twitter. It's an abomination, like up speak.
3
This is now the fourth opinion piece on this issue in the NYT I’ve cursorily read. I’ve seen none of the videos and do not care to. I deleted my Twitter and Facebook accounts years ago. I am on no social media, which is poisoning our political discourse. Period.
A twitterer (or twit or tweeter or whatever ) vowing to cut down on Twitter participation is like an alcoholic vowing to cut down on his drinking, as if he has any control over how much he tweets when he tweets at all.
America is a reeling drunk, imbibing the intoxicant of thoughtless provocation and shallow “analysis,” and bouncing off the walls whilst careening head over heels down the stairs. One can hope for a mere hangover as consequence. I fear worse: collective wet brain.
The writer is kidding himself.
6
I just deactivated my twitter account.
3
A crowd of unchaperoned children wearing racist garb attended a rally to strip women's rights and we're talking about... Twitter?
Journalism has bigger problems than already ubiquitous social networking tools.
4
@David
They were chaperoned, whatever you may think about the quality of the chaperoning. Most Catholic school students are required to participate in "Right-to-Life" activities by their schools, it's not voluntary. Which is an entirely different issue that deserves further scrutiny.
(Why is it ok to use children to push your religious or social agenda whatever it is?) The issue that gets me is the wholesale vilification of children(as you properly call them) rather than the "adults" in charge of them.
2
Perhaps the problem is, just because you know how to use the technology does not make you a journalist.
You gave up on the Covington story. You're content not to understand. No innate curiosity to know, to explain, to understand...
You became a journalist because you self promoted using technology. Much like Ezra Klein and his band of journ-o-lists. Plus, you are the picture of diversity...
It's not the technology.
It's the people using it, thinking when they publish, they become journalists or authors. Such vanity. Such re-writing of terms... save it for your fam?
1
@Midway
I disagree. The problem is that our reaction to the technology is beyond our ability to control yet. As a species we're still getting used to writing and printing.
1
The title of this piece got it right, even if the body of the text didn't. Never tweet. Never read tweets. By now it's certain: almost nothing can be expressed in the short form of a tweet except idiocy.
1
Hate to tell you, but your contrition and admission of twitter mistakes of the past make you "morally superior to other journalists" who STILL are working to justify their initial takes on Covington, Buzzfeed, etc.
2
"For years, I tweeted every ingenious and idiotic thought that came into my head..."
Twitter.
Tweets are not news.
Stop publishing them in the NYT and go back to reporting.
11
fascism scores a huge victory whenever you say hate speech is partisan bickering. good work all around nyt opinion page you're really holding the door open for the howling void at the end of the world
1
The Times legitimized tweets as newsworthy when it quoted, legitimized, the newly elected President Trump's first tweet from office. Good luck getting the cat back into the bag.
5
Dear NYT opinion writers,
Normal people don’t care about twitter nearly as much as you think we do. We also don’t care how guilty you feel about judging those obnoxious high schoolers (who, for the record, deserve to be judged just as harshly for showing up to a pro-life rally in MAGA hats to fortnite dance and tomahawk chop at an elderly Native American man).
That is to say, please stop running articles about this incident and decrying twitter like it’s some scourge on humanity. Most of us don’t care, and your myopia is getting tedious.
3
I’m curious, why the media ,a group of men and women I
Respect,Allowed a human, very few respect, to set the bar
On what will be read each hour of the day.are you aware you’ve done that.Some of you have worked in Government ,others
Have worked long years reporting.Please stop it, your better
Then that and your readers don’t care what the ignorant
Jerk said,let Fox report it.
Who ever they are, wearing the MAGA caps speaks a lot about those kids!
1
Twitter is dumb and pointless. I got an account years ago to see what all the fuss was about. It was, and is, about nothing. I futzed with it for a couple of weeks and left. I don't feel like I've missed out on a single thing.
Yes but the Tweeter-in- Chief is the one and only duly elected President of the United States.
Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google etc. need to be busted and broken up after their managers are investigated, prosecuted, convicted, sentenced, fined and imprisoned for antitrust violations, privacy violations and fraud along with cavorting, colluding, collaborating, conspiring and cooperating with Israel and Russia in hacking and meddling in American political campaigns and elections.
The 1st Amendment forbids and prohibits government restrictions on the freedom of the press and speech. There is no 1st Amendment protection against private restrictions on press and speech.
1
The NYT and Wash Post and all other sources of news including TV channels need to stop "reporting" the presidents tweets. Hiding behind his iphone, trump is a cowardly bully who is being given a platform. Please stop doing this...
8
Agree 100%
1
As a longtime reader of the Times, WaPo, WSJ, Politico, etc., it frustrates me to see - usually at the top of an article - the Twiterverse perspective. And I'm not even close to being a grumpy old man. TWITTER REPOTING IS NOT NEWS. ITS ALREADY OUT THERE! Journalists just being lazy.
5
"I began pulling back last year — not because I’m morally superior to other journalists but because I worried I was weaker."
After almost 10 years, I deleted my Twitter account late last year when two things converged simultaneously: 1) Similar to Farhad, I began to realize (in hindsight) I was having knee-jerk "Twitter Tourette's" reactions to tweets that "triggered" me; and, 2) In reviewing my followers (about 100), my hacker buddy discovered two fake profiles that were tied to mobile/cell numbers that he traced to my employer.
Farhad has written a reflective, well-reasoned, decisive call to action for journalists; unfortunately, as outlined in today's Times article about the BuzzFeed layoffs (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/business/media/buzzfeed-layoffs.html), the majority of journalism today has become about "becoming profitable" for investors, rather than factually, dispassionately educating and informing the public.
In laying off 15% of its workforce, is BuzzFeed going to keep its “brightest and best”? No, it’s going to layoff it’s highest paid “grunts in the trenches”, then turn around and hire replacements they will pay 25-30% less – or better yet, contractors that they will both pay less and won’t have to provide/pay benefits for.
This strategy does not lend itself to quality journalism.
As Irene Woods in Fairbanks accurately, eloquently observes: “Thank you for identifying what lies beneath the social media experience -- monetized 'addictive outrage'”.
2
Bravo, your courage and position are admirable. I have never used Tw. Facebook has earned similar marks , and is only slightly more restrained.
1
Banning Twitter would limit freedom of speech, and if we start illegalizing ways beople waste time, where does that end?
Unplug the internet.
1
The problem is not Twitter but the fact that many journalists find it necessary to report on what's posted on Twitter, rather than on the news. It's of course cheaper to get second hand information from Twitter, but you have to wonder, what's the value added of reporting "video posted on social media shows..." followed by a lengthy article about what's in the video? Why do you provide free advertising for Twitter? What's the point of describing a video? Can't people just watch it and make up their minds? Does the existence of a video make the event more important?
2
"Unquestionably, Syme will be vaporized." -Orwell
"Twitter is ruining American journalism."
Corrected:
"The simultaneous rise of Twitter and Donald Trump has ruined American journalism."
1
I’m surprised this piece had to be written. I can’t think of a single serious adult who would use twitter for anything other than blatant propaganda.
I, Mr. Manjoo, am NOT--
--Joseph Stalin.
YOU, Mr. Manjoo, are NOT--
--Joseph Stalin.
But Mr. Stalin (way back in the day) got an interesting compliment from--from--
--I don't remember who. Some fellow revolutionary.
Who called him "a remarkable man. He knows how to keep quiet--
"--in a country where everyone TALKS too much."
Years ago, I blew up at my daughter. Whom we had just picked up from a ten-day excursion to France. Whom (at the end of a long day) we proposed to take out to dinner somewhere--
--and who IMMEDIATELY got online, commiserating with some girlfriend who was having a rough time.
My wife and I (this is Norm, not Susan)--my wife and I eventually went out just the two of us. It was BEFORE this that I blew up--
--and yelled, "Half the United States is endlessly TALKING to the other half."
This was what?--around fifteen years ago.
So I think you have a real point, Mr. Manjoo. Though I have NEVER gone onto Twitter. I have NEVER gone onto Facebook. But the compulsion to talk--that remains. Lurking down there somewhere in the squalid depths of my heart. So what do I do?
I compose long comments to The New York Times.
Talk to you soon! Bye for now.
Hello? You just learned this? You never read "So you've been publicly shamed?" by Jon Ronson? Every journalist who uses social media should read it! IT WAS WRITTEN IN 2015.
2
Duh.
It's called "Twitter." That should have been the first clue. The name itself is so ironically ironic that it is downright sincere.
It's no better than finding a date off the bathroom wall at a gas station.
It's the preferred forum for our GameShowHost-in-Chief!
How people can be so narcissistic as to post on Twitter is idiotic to the extreme.
...says the guy posting here...
1
Happier since quitting Twitter. It's a cesspool of the high and mighty, the narcissistic, and the simply sick - and that's on a good day.
3
"...something about their smugness and certainty ..."
So, you don't know what happened but you do know what the kid was thinking?
The problem isn't with Twitter, it's with you.
3
Twitter is the bathroom wall of the internet.
4
It's amazing how all of these 'professional journalists' with their high ethical standards failed to ask themselves "Is their possibly anything that preceded this 5 sec. video clip that might add context to the story?"
No worries, we'll just blame Twitter for our lack of ethical reporting and eagerness to join with the mob and further disseminate this continuing narrative of 'white MAGA males evil'.
'Fake news' does not properly encapsulate what you are.
2
It’s also become really tiresome to read news articles that are just compilations of tweets that the author found on a subject. It’s lazy, phoned-in work, and it’s not news—it’s just the skewed sampling of an already skewed echo chamber of a self-selected group of people that like to hear themselves talk.
2
The title should’ve been “Look before you tweet”.
Having never Tweeted, I see no problem with this "meme," and while we're on the subject, I'm still either hazy or plumb ignorant on what that 4-letter word truly encompasses as well as what "#xxxxx" and "@xxxxx" accomplish. If anything, other than to rile the masses.
Back when I was in high school breaking news landed on one's doorstep with a house shuddering "thud," as the freshly-chiseled granite slab hit the front stoop. No one messed with it until Dad had read it. The editorial and the comics pages were not to be sullied by the grubby fingers of those too young to bring home a paycheck, not, at least, until Dad had read them, and spent an hour in the bathroom with the crossword puzzle as well.
The only TV allowed during the supper hour was CBS News. Until Walter Cronkite uttered it, it wasn't news. At best it was rumor. At that we didn't watch it but listened to it, as the TV set was tucked around the corner in the living room, out of sight of the dining "room" (an L-extension off the living room) table.
Incredibly, all my friends' families had similar rituals in the early evenings. More incredibly, the same was true of entire communities. People still had their political differences, but those quirks were never the basis for anything more serious than good-natured joshing about my "man" being the better choice than "yours."
Vietnam changed that. It changed me. It changed lots of things about America. But Twitter has caused more and faster and uglier change.
I joined Twitter before it was even public way back in 2007. As someone in tech, Im what they call an "early adopter."
However, I quit Twitter about 2 years ago when all the Nazis and white supremacists invaded the platform and Twitter management decided that their clicks and ad dollars were worth more than society's health and discourse.
Their stance to Trump's hateful tweets and obvious abuse of their own Terms and Service are that these tweets are "newsworthy." As a founder, Twitter's CEO sets the tone of their product. If there are Nazis, hate speech and harassment prevalent on the platform, thats on Twitter's management. Its because they _choose_ to let them in.
So sure, they can enjoy the hate speech and harassment. I decided that I wasnt going to take part in it.
2
Let us never fail to thank our All Thumbs All The Time President for bringing the Twit back to Twitter.
1
I love you, buddy.
1
High school kids should disengage from twitter. All well & good, Farhad, but I want to hear more about you immigration ideas!
This country is headed for a new civil war that will make the first one look like a picnic...
3
As the writer acknowledges, “many in the news — myself included —“ have turned “into knee-jerk outrage-bots reflexively set off by this or that hash-tagged cause...”. THIS is the problem, not Twitter. Many journalists forgot that they are supposed to be unbiased, find and report facts, and attempt objectivity. The best still do, but most have become what used to be called bloggers. Even at the venerable NYTimes, which has historically been one of the best unbiased sources of news, this is becoming true. Don’t believe that? Look at the first 20 stories at random any given day, and tally how many involve unbiased reporting of news, versus an open expression of feelings and an attempt to persuade. It’s invariably fewer than half. Oh how I miss Macneil Lehrer on PBS!
3
Words of Wisdom! ;)
1
I’m aghast at how long it has taken journalists to realize this.
2
Totally agree.
1
I am sorry, those white boys were disrespectful towards that older man. I did not need to “hire” a PR firm to see that in all the videos shown!
1
Twitter is the Trump go-to Alamo of alternative facts. Yes, Farhad, we should stop, but it's like stopping smoking. Bad for people, but what the heck?
It wasn't too long ago that newsboys in knickers shouted "Extra! Extra!" and hawked newspapers with stories people called "hot off the press."
An ex-newspaper reporter, I know that little feels better than seeing your newspaper with page-one news that your competition lacks. Any real journalist is going to want to be first with the news. Unfortunately, Twitter has turned us all into drunken idiots who want to be first with our opinions too. The corporate world recommends a simple rule regarding emails that may be contentious: Sleep on it, read it again the next day. If it still seems all right, hit send.
74
@Bridgman...
Speak for yourself, sir.
I have no interest in reading tweets from twits or the responses from their followers. It's all vainglorious self-promotion, no matter what the poster might think.
And, I have no interest in getting my news from "breaking news" sources passed on by friends and acquaintances on Facebook.
It's ironic that the press is only now beginning to realize how these instances of overreaction and failure to verify have sapped their credibility and that each time this sort of thing occurs, their actions only prove Trump's derisive accusation of the press promoting fake news.
Come on, guys...You're smarter than just giving the game away !
7
@Bridgman, yes! And in the corporate world rule #2 is never send an angry e-mail. Sadly, our President violates both rules each day. He immediately tweets out every thought that comes into his head, including many that are unflattering to him. If he WOULD sleep on these and better yet bring his communications staff into play I think he'd have a much better product. But maybe he'd lose the power that working in this way has in appealing to his base.
1
Absolutely true. The media should be deriving news from the work of skilled reporters, not Twitter and other anti-social media. Trump's tweets are not fit to be the subject of "news." Nor are any others.
3
I have never used Twitter. Does that mean I am a twit? I have never signed up for Facebook, or instagram. My life still seems meaningful to me! Is there something the matter with me?! I do use a smart phone so I must be smart.
2
I deleted my Facebook and Instagram. I don’t use Twitter. Being off social media has made me feel better about even when I didn’t realize I was unhappy. I am sure there is some facet to humanity that does not work well with computerized communities that no one knew about when these platforms were designed and we are now suffering from. What annoys me though is when articles like this are published - and then, at the bottom, it says to follow the journalist on Twitter. In the Well section there is a 30 day challenge which includes a piece on the downsides of social media and mobile use, and then at the bottom, it encourages readers to post their progress on social media. Why can we not just stop it entirely?
2
Time to get away from the 2D (fake 3D is virtual, not "virtuous" or real) world.
Take a walk. Meet some people's eyes. Leave the phone at hoe, or at least silently out of immediate reach/consciousness.
Meanwhile, global warming/climate change, for exaple. A reality check is coming.
Imagine what you would do if the power went out for a couple of weeks, like it does all too often these days. Why is everyone so dependent.
Try some paper books, the kind you can mark and shelve and find without your gadget. What happens when your computer stuff ages out? When the links are broken and you can't find it on the "wayback machine".
Try more reality. It's harder to be mean in the flesh, and you get dimensions of other people that don't come across in print. We're all human.
It's too early to surrender to the cyber world. Computers are not omniscient. Humans may be fragile but we're all we've got.
3
Of all the things that freak me out about this whole twitter mess - it's having the energy and infrastructure plan prepared by tweets that freaks me out the most.
After all the tweeting between warring factions (green new deal vs. energy dominance), we'll probably end up with NYC subway improvements to handle Amazon worker ridership and a tri state area sea wall all paid for by ever increasing crude oil, petroleum products and liquified natural gas exports. Oh, and the rest of the country will get a border wall with solar panels attached.
2
I haven't jumped on the Twitter or Instagram trends even though I work in tech. I'm more interested in ideas and not personalities and personal brands.
I did find Twitter useful when I was evacuated due to a nearby forest fire. The local news updated once a day or so but Twitter was able to give me more helpful information sooner and more often from the fire department and local people posting pictures of the fires progress.
I think Twitter is great for emergencies but not for petty things and mob justice.
1
I have never done Twitter because it seems like it just encourages people to shoot from the hip, blatting out the first thought that comes into their heads on every given subject. There are people who never seem to have an unpublished thought. Twitter doesn’t seem to encourage reflection on a subject, which is what we need journalists for, to contribute to the public light, not the heat. Twitter seems like yelling your opinion into the public square on current events; Facebook is like writing them on a wall. Neither invites reflection or gathering information. imho.
1
FOMO has always been around, but social media's reinforcement of "finding the next best thing" is making a generation of kids who can't focus or find satisfaction in the tasks at hand. I mentor recent college grads at work and even the smartest of them are struggling with what used to be considered minimal demands. It's no wonder hard-working immigrants are attractive to employers. Let's teach FOFOMO.
I opened a Twitter account several years ago and closed it shortly thereafter. I guess I just couldn’t understand the point of being so accessible without anything in particular to say. Recently I have become rather disenchanted with Facebook. I appreciate the ability to maintain contacts with widely scattered friends and family but it’s also filled with so much trash - fake news, gossip and slanted opinions - that I’m tempted to just abandon it entirely. Social media is turning America into a “mobocracy”, with public sentiment moving like a school of fish depending on the currents of the moment. No time for reflection or nuance.
2
Saddest of all, many of those that rushed to tweet were the cream of national press corps. i.e. highly trained professional adults who acted like spoiled children and utterly betrayed those of us who trust them to speak truth.
Journalism (which I teach) is on life support in America. If any of my students had tweeted or written so irresponsibly, she/ he would fail the assignment, and I teach high school.
3
Moderation in all things. It's not Twitter that is the problem. Twitter is just another means of communication.
2
Another interesting point that has been made but not yet proven is that the initial viral tweet with the carefully edited Covington video came from a Twitter account that has thousands of followers but no face attached to it. Is it possible that this Twitter account's maintenance team is in an office building in Moscow? You bet it is.
2
The technology is here, so it will be utilized. There's nothing that can be done on that score. On the other hand, by my definition a person who "tweets" is therefore a "twit," meaning some kind of fool. And now we have our very own "Twit in Chief" to lead the charge. Ship of fools, sea of twits, whatever.....
The Twitter form of platform does not enjoy constitutional protection, only its content. The platform can be outlawed. Should be. It’s making our nation sick.
a former technology columnist like Mr. Manjoo should already know that "addiction" is not a bug of digital media but a consciously and laboriously crafted feature — across platforms, across devices, across media.
even videogames now have their loot boxes.
i infer his premise that reporters should exert their willpower to withdraw from a Twitter time addiction, then consider how well willpower works with alcoholism, gambling, and opioid addiction.
and those addictions are just "recreational." what specifically should professional reporters do when every government agency, public and private institution, financial service and soi-disant thought leader uses Twitter to make announcements and respond to events? how else would reporters keep up?
step back, and look how the entirety of the global infrastructure — media, finance, law, politics, internet, medicine, education — is coopted by corporations, crafted by the profit motive, and moving inexorably toward a world in which human is bred as a wage earning herd animal that is harvested for its consumer dollars.
your focus is too narrow, and Twitter is the least of your problems. really.
1
Mr Manjoo, I support your op-ed 100%, but also ask:
Why stop there? Breaking "news"--whether by social media, internet, or television--is a travesty. Facts are not checked, sources are not scrutinized, anonymity reigns supreme (leaving accountability locked in the Tower). With such recklessness for the sake of capturing eyeballs comes notions of "fake news" even when it's REAL NEWS.
A free press is only good if people have confidence in it--and opinion/interpretation passing as fact has been undermining this confidence by the minute. I'm not sure how you save it, but Twitter alone isn't the issue.
Perhaps bring back print? Space is sacred given the inherent costs of good ole' fish wrap, so only the best gets sent out from what I remember or it. Otherwise I'm not sure how your business resolves this when it seems so quick to sell its soul for advertising revenue, however.
1
If a journalistic product isn’t trusted enough to have a paid edition IRL, move in to other sources. And, if there isn’t a daily corrections page, choose something else.
How can any responsible journalist, political leader or citizen rely on the character limited Twitter to communicate or receive news or information? Character limited people in my opinion rely on character limited Twitter. This shouldn't be news to anyone
I would love it if every journalist stopped using Twitter. It is often completely devoid of factual information, and there is no time to do anything but react to what is written there. Please go a step further and STOP REPORTING ON EVERY PRESIDENTIAL TWEET. That, in itself, would stop so much bad information from flowing, especially from those who engage with Trump. Yes, I am looking at you, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and all the other president goaders. The world would be so much better without all the mean spirited vitriol spewing there. Shut the pipeline down!
2
Tweeting is the most obvious form of commercial news chasing the scoop that drives ratings, with no investigation of the truth. Most commentators assign blame to one of the participants—indigenous demonstrators, Black Hebrew Israelites, or white MAGA hat wearing Catholic school boys. Blame is easy; analysis is hard. The Indigenous Peoples March was for water rights, rights of native women against assault, against climate change and police brutality. The Black Hebrew Israelites mobilized to harangue the indigenous march as racial failures. I attended an Occupy the South Bronx rally, almost completely black and brown, where they harassed us with constant chanting. It seems their strategy to build their sect is to target and propagandize progressive minority rallies to peel off converts. When the Catholic school boys with MAGA caps appeared, the Israelites turned their racial harangue onto them. Native American elder Nathan Phillips stepped into the middle, beating his drum, to defuse the conflict. The Catholic boys turned their attention from the Hebrews to the indigenous demonstrators, perhaps an easier target, mocking them with tomahawk chops and war whoops. This racial tension, normally concealed, is like a buried mine waiting to explode and politically divide and disable the American public, paving the way for dictatorship.
Does anyone agree that adding comments here (which I like to read and occasionally reply to as well) is just another form of “twitter”. Our chance to have our voices heard too.
1
@Shellbrav
Not really. The moderation generally culls offenders and there's no opportunity for attachments.
The comments, as moderated, generally reflect the original promise of the Net. They're the best part of this paper, which otherwise is pretty monochromatic. When they become leaden, uniform and completely predictable--especially anything related to Trump--I just ignore.
1
Glad to say, don’t and won’t.
1
Nobody who signed up for Twitter or Facebook bothered to read the Terms of Service. “Don’t sign up” always made more sense than Never Tweet does now.
A minor observation: The word "priors," in the phrase "confirmed my priors," is a bad choice. It allows the writer to avoid expressing something more revealing about his inner state. Prior "assumptions"? Prior "beliefs?" Prior "prejudices?" Prior is an adjective, not a noun, except when the thing it modifies is clear from the context (as in "prior (conviction)s").
It would be nice if professional writers did not model lazy writing, especially when writing about a medium that encourages it!
Mr. Manjoo's critique of Twitter is certainly fair, but his critique also applies elsewhere. Our digital age is filled with opportunities to speak before thinking, and we seize those opportunities enthusiastically.
What about comment sections on news sites? Comments on an article are typically closed within hours after the article is posted, which means that the comment sections by design favor impulse and reaction over well thought out and carefully considered discussion. The Times allows comments up to 1,500 characters - better than Twitter, but not enough to permit full, nuanced discussion of serious issues.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
1
Here, here such a timely article everyone should read! I do not use twitter, I find it annoying and an avenue for people to be mean-spirited without explanation. Just look at what comes out of the White House as an example. Go for it media, stop twitter and investigate and share the truth!
1
Why can't you do both? Look at Twitter posts to see what is emerging in the news and wait for further news without rushing to judgment?
I love how the media, caught red handed ganging up on a teenager they thought (hoped) was harassing a native Amercan cannot admit they were wrong. The most I have heard is news anchors and journalists bemoaning how the atmosphere has made it impossible to decide who was wrong. NO MAN... the kid was just standing there absorbing insults from racist bigots. There is no remaining confusion on the issue! The fact that he was wearing a MAGA hat should not give the media permission to just assume that he deserves the abuse notwithstanding the truth. Sickness from today's left is making me want to re-elect the red menace in 2020. Please don't make me do that. I beg of you.
3
Headline says “never.”
First line says “consider disengaging.”
Second says you “don’t have to totally quit.”
Sounds like the internal monologue of an addict.
1
Kudos to Manjoo
Might I add, “Cui bono?” Publishers and editors are up to their necks in this. They could start by banning the use of redundant hyperlinked screen-grabs that follow the traditional quotations. But doing so would rob the online papers of click-throughs, valued by advertisers and thus a revenue source.
Additionally, the micro reporting on this or that Twitter or FB trend or dust-up is easier for the journalists to churn out and cheaper for the publishers than long-form investigative reporting.
We are up to our necks in opinion pieces, trend pieces, missives about this or that intersectionality, penned, one thinks, by very junior but oh so brassy reporters. In one national paper down my way, one can hardly read a recipie without a predictable side dish on the perils of cultural appropriation.
This reader would like to see more thoughtful pieces along the lines of the NYT’s excellent essay on Ghadhi and his changing reputation and less on ephemera.
Just because it's viral doesn't make it newsworthy.
Media outlets ought to consider this before publishing.
1
"You don’t have to quit totally — that’s impossible in today’s news business."
Why? Why is it so "impossible" to avoid, even ad-block, a site that calls a racist internet troll—who illegitimately claims to be "president", uses powers as "president" to attack media groups like your very employer, and breaks its stated ToS daily—too "newsworthy" to ban?
Is it fear of missing out, or just fear of legitimizing ad-block?
If you're not using it at MOST for reading updates for projects by groups who have forgotten what an RSS feed is, or you still have an account there, you're doing it wrong.
-----
"I don’t care to litigate the events concerning the Covington kids. I have read and watched at least a half-dozen accounts, and in the Rashomon haze of smartphone-captured clips I am still not sure what exactly happened. The story seems complicated enough to merit careful analysis, which was unsurprisingly nowhere in sight the few times I checked Twitter this weekend."
Just like "love means never having to say you're sorry", journalism means never having to say "I couldn't find the answer on Twitter". Find the answer—do actual reporting.
Hint, though: people in MAGA hats are already a lost cause, and parents who rear kids to wear them even more so.
Our only choice is to outvote in 2020, if we live to that.
1
“Image over substance” is here to stay as long as the US’ three hundred million cell phones are operational—and I just looked up the acronym FOMO yesterday after seeing it on social media. FOMO is also relentlessly a thing of the electronic age.
The most interesting comment on the Covington boys I have heard was a commenter on NPR saying: “Everyone was in costume—the boys, the Native American, the Black Hebrew Israelites—they all knew the cameras were rolling; they all played their parts.”
All of them have name recognition now, don’t they.
Marshall McLuhan said the satellite arc is a theater procenium arch. Makes all the world a permanent 24/7 theater.
The internet makes every nonosecond of history equal and simultaneous, like Boethius’ mind of g-d. Sorry, Mr. Mangoo. However right you may be about careful consideration and reflection, the age of measured thinking went out with slide rules.
A 'twit' who 'tweets' would not have made you most likely to succeed in any other time frame but now.
1
Twitter tweeting is gossip.
Gossip is a character flaw.
My Grandmother taught us that character determines your confidence in interacting with the world.
If you reinforce your gossiping flaw, you will lose confidence in truth and lose confidence in Thyself.
Twitter has poisoned those who used to scoop for truth into suckers for sensation that demeans themselves.
1
Twitter is a pit of lies and fighting and ugly fantasy that will ruin not only journalism, but all of our minds and our society.
We should all Never Tweet.
Social Media = Social Disease
1
Blather, Farhad, if not pure hypocrisy. "Twitter will ruin us, and we should stop." Follow Farhad on Twitter; chat with Farhad at 1430 on Twitter. Demonstrate leadership and go cold turkey.
Twitter is a weapon of mass destruction.
1
“Twitter is ruining journalism.” This is major reason why the “stable genius” uses it.
Social media is really dangerous. It makes people believe that small inflammatory trivia is important.
Take the Covington Kids. I have not actually followed what happened, because the whole thing is irrelevant. If they did act stupid, there is no penury of stupids around, and the fact that some kids sometimes act stupid, especially in groups, is hardly newsworthy. If they did not act stupid, then that's even less newsworthy. In fact, I think it's verging on the inappropriate that the NYT spent (electronic only I hope) ink on it.
But because somebody tweets, omg, then it becomes important. While thousands of people must be dying in some unfortunate way round the world today, and a lot more newsworthy (but less public) things must be going on all over the place.
So not only tweet less, but care less about twitter when choosing what to cover, would be my advice.
I hope we will find a way to wean ourselves from this folly.
1
I agree, and I will add that all of this is affecting the low standards writers have for themselves. Consider the poor choice of words "...tugs journalists deeper into the rip currents of tribal melodrama." Tribal melodrama? I would have edited that out.
1
There’s are two reasons why the media jumped all over this incident....the kids were part of the “right to life” March, and wore MAGA hats. The anti-trump liberal media found this 100% intolerable, and went after these young men with a vengeance. Words cannot explain how disgusting the media has become and how their bias against anything and anybody they label as “conservative” can elicit such hateful rhetoric and thoughts.
2
Key way for a Democrat to win in 202:
Run AGAINST the Twitter outrage machine.
What controversy? The right wing outrage and victimhood machine went into high gear on TV, radio, print and social media to, as usual, protect a bunch of angry white racists who got caught.
Disengage from social media? No. Better to stop letting the right wing frame the argument.
Merriam-Webster: Twitter; to make fast and unusually high sounds, to talk in an informal way about unimportant things. What's in a name indeed.
Twitter seems to be just another sign of a major shift in the thinking process of Americans. I can't say for sure, since I have never used it. But I do use the internet extensively and, like many, I find myself falling into the trap of leaping from one hyperlink to another, often without ever finishing the original thought. There is a serious debate about whether the information age is making us smarter or dumber , or better informed in breadth but much less so in depth, or whether it is really changing our thinking process and whether those who grow up with it become less able to carry on complex , lengthy discussions or complete and understand a whole book. We once thought that the wonder of television would lead to a golden age of information, culture, and education. We now know better.
I haven't signed in to Twitter or tweeted since September 2016 when I received a death threat for tweeting something complimentary about Hillary Clinton.
I reported it to Twitter but it somehow did not violate their terms of service.
I have been lurking via my browser ever since to keep up with the news and follow some of the tweeps who are funniest to me.
1
Twitter is the voice of the mob that divides us more than it could ever unite us. Twitter is a peek into the darkness of direct democracy and the pitfalls it entails(see Brexit). The news media, rather than choosing tribes to support, should redouble their efforts to accomplish their singular duty to separate fact from fiction. Trump, Mr. Tweet himself, has governed by Twitter, a forum where the mob waits to hear only the narrative they expect to hear.
4
Around here Facebook is for business and hobby information gleaning only. Instagram is mostly business, occasionally personal. There is no Twitter. I find it just absurd and maddening when “news” articles are larded with Twitter quotes. Lazy, lazy journalism unless the story is actually about Twitter quotes.
1
"Beclown" is one fantastic and timely word.
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All of these instant communication apps are like an immediate high for a moment and then back to the next Tweet for more of the same.
Are these apps at no dollar cost the "crack cocaine" of life today?
They appear to be addictive.
They appear to be all-consuming.
They appear, many times, not to be rational.
They appear, at times, to have no basis of the truth.
They reinforce one's beliefs and attitudes and prolongs one sided results.
That's the picture I see. No, I do not subscribe to ANY of them.
4
Twitter is porn. It provides a quick illicit rush, followed by some brief satisfaction, followed by a sense that maybe one could be doing something better with one’s time. It’s neither good nor bad, really, as long as its purpose is understood.
1
I never used Twitter. I left Facebook. Get out into the real world. Engage brain before using fingers. Don't get into pissing contests with skunks. Be willing to admit you are wrong. Learn how to apologize.
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To the author: Please don't limit the perceived damage that you describe from twitter to journalism...It is pervasive. While I support advances in communication arising from technology as a general principle there are clearly instances when changes are not positive. Can anyone assert that the President's use of twitter is a positive??? It is a classic example of "fire, ready and screw aim!" He is merely the most visible and dangerous example....but not the only one.
3
Twitter is the perfect metaphor for today's public discourse: shallow, reactionary, ephemeral, mean-spirited sound bites that offer nothing to a truly thoughtful conversation.
The saddest part is that 280 characters is far beyond the capacity needed for so many people's reasoning ability.
1
The problem with tweeting journalists is that they're really just competing with each other - each trying to post the first tweet. Really, most of us don't care who's first, only that what they report is accurate. Journalism should not be a competitive sport.
3
Common sense tells us all that Twitter (and others) but especially Twitter is dangerous - it is used by and for those who have limited vocabulary along with little or not any common sense. Then we see the President of the USA tweeting night and day - does anyone still question his mentality? If you're still a supporter of this hapless president, by all means -tweet,tweet,tweet.
1
Never have, never will. All of these "social networks" are like an endless AOL Eternal September. No thanks.
I thought it was evident Twitter ruined politics, which replaced deliberations and consultations among experts and politicians by a gut of someone who was seemingly chosen by whim. I read NYT because I trust journalists to do investigative reports, not instinctive ones.
1
I have begun to lose faith in the journalism being shoveled down our throats on a daily basis. To me, that is more frightening than almost anything else. Professionalism is dying in the trade and Twitter is a big reason why. It’s takes no effort, it’s lazy journalism. The more journalist can separate themselves from social media like Twitter the better we will all be for it. The high ground is there for the taking. It just takes a little work and conviction.
I just want to thank the NYT and a few other news media companies for striving to be the be best, not necessarily the first, to provide high quality journalism. Worth every cent. Now don’t let us down.
2
Amen. Luke 4:23: "Physician, heal thyself"
I doubt the journalistic community can do it, though correct to call for them to move away from journalism-by-soundbite/video clip/tweet and get back to deliberate, honest reporting.
The desire for ratings and likes and shares will make that aspiration unattainable.
2
The media has given this boy who has become the center of attraction a lot of undeserved baggage to carry through life. Maybe they should try to make it right.
2
For the real legit press to rely on Twitter is totally self defeating. Aaron Sorkin saw this in The Newshour. Get a clue: tell the truth and stop pandering to fashion and faux-urgency.
2
I am old enough to remember the movies of the 1940s and 1950s in which the intrepid reporters ran headlong out of a courtroom, or a police station, or any venue, to find a telephone (oh those days of yore) to call their editors to get the headline out before their competitors.
I think that the only thing that has changed is the amount of time it takes to get the headline out.
2
I have never used Twitter and don't plan to in the future. It reminds me of my kids in high school who would sleep with their phones in case someone sent a text at 2:00 AM. Invariable, the text would say something like whaz up? When I saw that they were doing this all night long, I confiscated the phones. Twitter is just an extension of the feeling that one must be connected to something electronic all the time. No exceptions. It is electronic hegemony. No thanks.
3
Agreed.
Twitter: Just. Say. No.
(That goes for Facebook, too.)
2
And while journalists shouldn't post on twitter, we the reader shouldn't consume on news on Twitter (or Facebook, etc.) either. I'm even questioning my reliance on nytimes.com. I get the Sunday newspaper and I read through it. Instead of just seeing the hot-button articles I see all types of worthwhile stories that you are guaranteed to miss online.
Going back to journalists, I'm always surprised when I see tweets from Times journalists. (My wife has Twitter.) Those tweets always come off as knee jerk and seem more like opinion than journalism. I'm surprised the Times allows them to post. The same way news in the paper goes through an editor why would the same occur with tweets?
News is meant to inform. Twitter doesn't inform. It just pushes your buttons.
2
I loved Twitter for years, but sometime around 2016 it just stopped being fun. It’s overrun with trolls, harassers and “outrage of the day” mobs. Jack Dorsey wont do anything about them as engagement is Twitter’s business model - and nothing increases engagement like making people angry. I locked my account and changed my password to something I can’t remember, and feel a lot better for it (and have a surprising amount of extra free time). I’d strongly recommend others do the same. Social media is an outrage engine and a threat to democracy, the only winning move is not to play.
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@Gareth I think I agree that social media is an outrage engine, but I don't think its ONLY function is an outrage engine. I guess it's more than just an outrage engine- it's an engine built for the snowball effect, for reactions to gather without thinking, whether compassionate, angry, afraid, or what have you. Twitter allows us to act as a mob. As they said in Men in Black, "A PERSON is smart. PEOPLE are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."
I actually think Twitter needs journalists, but not as reporters. I think Twitter needs journalists for fact-checks, to COUNTER the flow of misinformation. We don't need to be right there as it happens. We need to be the ones who get it right, no matter how long it takes. And then Tweet. The problem is only if we feel we MUST keep up with Twitter's pace. That's where the danger comes in.
2
Thank you Mr. Manjoo. I have a Twitter account but don't use it--I mean, who would care what I have to say? I can understand using Twitter if you are a journalist or celebrity. The problem is that someone of my age (55) can feel, not left out, but behind in skills if one doesn't keep up with technology. I'm a writer, and like so many of us, don't have what marketing people drive me crazy by calling a "platform" that will help them sell my books. I'm no Jane Austen or Joan Didion, but it does seem ludicrous to me that writers often have to prove they have an audience--Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc--before someone will even consider publishing them. This is the reality.
In the movie Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Emma Stone's character Sam shows her actor father (played by Michael Keaton) a video gone viral of him running across the street in his underwear. I couldn't find the exact dialog but I think she says, "That's power."
27
Well said! Social media is a dangerous drug—it can easily eat up your time and your energy. Ever increasingly it becomes difficult to hear the “other” side of any argument, as well as to discern the legitimate information. I have also tried to cut back time spent on Twitter and FB, it’s like dieting—-you open the fridge wondering what you’re looking for and inevidently end up eating the ice cream.
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It would be at least helpful to eliminate anonymity. The rule should be if you won’t put ur name on it, you shouldn’t say it. Also good advice for the NYT in the comments not section. In the end, what is that but twitter on another platform.
If it isn't Twitter or Facebook it's alcohol or opiods or heroin or sitcoms or daytime TV or over eating or incessantly shopping for stuff we don't need. America is a nation of addicts.
1
Twitter is the worst thing to come along since Fox ~News~. It's turned the world into a pack of gossiping trolls.
Until recently, I thought the only tweets of any importance were the ones that might be used as evidence against the Troll-in-Chief. Now Twitter can also show us who America's real leaders and policy-makers are: a few foaming-at-the-mouth pundits that have Trump's ear.
Most of Twitter is a pile of knee-jerk reactions to unimportant events. If you're not one of America's policy makers, your tweets are either worthless or have negative value.
Mr. Manjoo gives us wise advice.
I am possibly an indirect victim of Twitter. I am not on that social media platform, but I do read, watch, hear "news" which I'm guessing may have initiated with some outrageous Tweet. Much better to get real news which only real journalists take time to get the facts and report.
The name of this social communications platform pretty much characterizes and sums up what it produces. Twitter by (Merriam Webster) definition:
intransitive verb
1 : to utter successive chirping noises
2a : to talk in a chattering fashion
b : GIGGLE, TITTER
3 : to tremble with agitation : FLUTTER
transitive verb
1 : to utter in chirps or twitters
2 : to shake rapidly back and forth : FLUTTER
twitter noun
1 : a small tremulous intermittent sound (as of birds)
2a : a light silly laugh : GIGGLE
b : a light chattering
3 : a trembling agitation : QUIVER
1
Such a promising title. Such disappointing action. If Twitter is ruining American journalism (I agree social media is), then it is more hypocritical than ironic to host a discussion on Twitter.
Sad!
1
Have never sent a tweet. Have never received a tweet. Thought the whole thing sounded ridiculous when it first came out.
Give me specificity, nuance, details from trained, educated, cultivated, minds of people.. in short .. Give me The New York Times and The New Yorker.
3
You tweeted during your wedding and during the birth of your children?!? If you value your wife, and the life you two have made together, I implore you to use your writing talents to craft a handwritten apology to her and acknowledge that your wife deserved far, far better. Call it a start. Not sure where you go from there, but you owe her big.
Farhad, where have you been all along?!!! When you began writing for the Times, I considered you a shill for Silicon Valley tech companies, especially Apple. Then in the past year or so you have written some interesting columns acknowledging that not every "next big thing" necessarily constituted progress for humanity.
However, you still don't seem to get it. It's not Twitter, it's the entire internet, which has turned people into electronic addicts. The tech companies, with almost universal government connivance (ironically, some partial exceptions in autocracies), profitably go about the business of selling heroin to junkies, candy to infants. And no more than telling a little kid that lots of candy is bad for her or a junkie that heroin is bad for him, will telling people the internet can never be reliably honest, secure, private, or impartial change their addiction to it, especially regarding (anti)social media, the fentanyl of the internet.
How many people who vehemently condemn interference in American elections, especially that of Russia, through phony online stories and ads, as well as through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like, nonetheless proclaim their indignation on these very same platforms, thus contributing to their "legitimacy" and profitability?
Instant "media" is essentially a Rorschach blot encouraging people to be certain of what they already think, 24/7 verification of one's hopes, fears, and beliefs, Covington just the tip of the iceberg.
1
Mr. Manjoo your premise is good. Your theory suggest that Tweeting is ruining journalism. It is The lack of courage by the journalist that is ruining journalism. There are and always will be quality organisations that take on the fight to speak truths and share intelligent ideas, question bad decision and uphold the integrity of the journalist. But today’s market journalist competes in a social world as if ratings are more than the message. Speak the truth and the message will be heard. No truth is leaned from a reaction to a reaction. Wear out a pair of shoes if you want good journalism.
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@Charles Callaghan Journalism done well is thoughtful, considered and researched, the mechanics of tweeting don't support that ethos.
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@RJBBoston
A tweet is what you make it, there is nothing "mechanical" preventing thoughtful posts
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@Charles Callaghan
What is ruining journalism is the constant publishing of opinion masquerading as "news". What has happened to the reporter's digging for a story and then telling us the facts unadorned by opinion ?
5
I will begin using the word "beclown" often.
1
Tweeting is neither journalism nor truth. It is more akin to a “man on the street” opinion, laden with the burdens and baggage of the Tweeter, with no explanation of context or factual research to back it up. Why Tweets have turned into news stories in and of themselves is beyond me.
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Exactly.
2
@Jack Sonville Lurking on the other hand can be quite interesting
@Jack Sonville I think what turned it into a big deal are the Daily Presidential Tweets. Policy by Tweet! Now YOU can shoot off your mouth just like the President!
7
Bravo. Left social media years ago. Would prefer to read a book and listen to music.
The mainstream media in Canada is constantly directing us to social media to access complete information for weather and natural disaster emergencies. My local CBC radio station almost exclusively uses Twitter for listener feedback ... we either join in or we’re excluded. Thank you Manjoo for your article.
1
So, Farhad, you grew up. Hopefully others will too and eschew the dopamine rush that a social media "gotcha!" gives, and behave like adults.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
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How exactly did anyone in the media, misguided or otherwise, "shut down dissent"? Who exactly has this kind of power?
Only terrible people are on Twitter. Twitter is exclusively a tool for all kinds of mobs, because it is designed for them. There is nothing useful going on on Twitter - at all. Quit it today. It's bad and useless and nobody needs it.
Because all sensible people already heeded that advice, Twitter users will also badly distort its users' sense of reality. It will make you think that those Twitter storms of outrage actually represent general opinion, when it is only the opinion of the mob-lovers that populate Twitter. There are a great many of them, but it's still a very small and highly unrepresentative segment of the population.
Twitter is the main reason that journalists today are so far away from actual normal people.
I guess I should feel blessed that I don’t have and never have had a Twitter account. But then I’m -as they say-up in years-so it just never appealed to me. I still get my local newspaper delivered to me and I read the NYT online-which I gladly pay for. But why just look at this incident? Our tweeter-in-Chief has done more damage with his Twitter account than this one tweet could ever do AND he has made it almost impossible for the news media to ignore his tweets. The excuse I often hear is well, he’s the President-we have to report his tweets. Why? If he has 50 million followers-that is more than all the newspapers and tv news watchers combined I’d bet-let him. Report on only those things that the administration DOES not what he tweets. I would bet there would be a lot less handwringing over things that the media got wrong.
Agreed, but this really is a most obvious opinion. It just seems that any thinking adult should have come to this conclusion long ago. Do we need an “influencer” to tell us this?
"There’s never any time to wait to get out your take: fear of missing out, which is Twitter’s primary sensibility, requires that everyone offer an opinion before much is known — because by the time more is known, Twitter will already have moved on to something else."
This article, and the other three (!) opinion pieces that the NYT has published in the past several days gives the lie to the above contention. These articles covering the same ground with roughly the same points — mainly, be cautious about first impressions on Twitter — have received lots of comments, so they've sparked continued interest. Twitter may have moved on, but we're still back here mulling over the incident and the reportage. If the writer were correct, none of this would be happening: we'd all have charged on to the next Twitter sensation a long tweet-time ago.
I think what we have here is a relatively new medium, and we're learning how to integrate it into our lives and livelihoods. Journalists are on the same learning curve. I expect, sooner or later, when a hot-button video (short, dramatic, seemingly confrontational, polarizing with MAGA hats and native drums) is foisted into the platform, media like the NYT will have found a way to contextualize the appearance of the tweet, determine whether and when to report on it, and proceed with journalistic caution. This procedure will be followed every time we have such a Twitter event.
Twitter itself, I suspect, will continue to be Twitter.
Social media is socially destructive. Maybe it's possible to construct social media that actually brings value to the world, but it hasn't happened yet and doesn't look like it will anytime soon. Quit it all and make your life better.
We let kids change the world: “Let’s create online communities where anybody can post anything.” And like most kids they didn’t think through what they were doing and the grownups weren’t paying attention and now we are in a mess.
When it was shiny and new my sister encouraged me to get on Twitter. I realized quickly it seemed to simply be a silly way to show one’s cleverness or take down one’s “enemies” rather than anything useful. I didn’t want or need the attention, so my Twitter time was short-lived. I have never missed it (or Facebook)... and I think my attitude toward social media officially qualifies me as a curmudgeon. Now get off my cyber-lawn, you whippersnappers!
Well, finally, someone with some sense. Thanks Mr. Manjoo. I have a twitter account, but I follow exactly one person because of a professional affiliation, and I rarely even look at it. I rely on seeing the rehashes either from friends' emails/texts or as part of a news story on these hallowed digital pages. Twitter is a waste of time and brings out the worst in us. Advertisers aren't enthusiastic about it as an advertising platform, btw, so I'm hoping someday the whole carnival implodes.
All true but there’s a larger issue at stake. Every time a video like this gets blown up as the latest and greatest outrage, and then debunked, we get closer to a “cry wolf” mentality when a real racist encounter will just be shrugged off.
This piece should be required reading—if not policy—in every newsroom.
1
As you very clearly describe an "ongoing information war," with its currently known, still unknown implications and outcomes, because of gaps in needed knowledge and technologies, and even in forever-unknowables, you suggest a viable "abstinence"-path. What not to do. Long before twitter and tweeting media contributed to creating and sustaining a toxic WE-THEY culture which violated, daily, by words and images, created, selected, targeted "the other(s)."With shameless certitude! Proferring description as explanation. Goulashing facts, fictions and fantasies. Long before Trump. Long before the semantics of "people of color," the Yellow Press nurtured hatred.Fears. Excluding. Marginalizing. Dehumanizing. Not too long ago the media created "crack babies." "Just say No" was mantrafied.Made-in-America meds are transmuted in opioid-OD deaths.As you promote NO to twittered=tweets,consider adding an additional needed caveat.Help us move more effectively, from a YES-NO binary banality,to a more open-continuum of viable options.Away from toxic unintentional complacency and active harmful complicity.From "infectious" wilfull blindness to what IS, which should not be.Never should have been. Wilfull deafness to the experienced existential pains of so many. Within our midst as well as far away. Including from the muted too-exhausted to voice their physical, psychological, spiritual, social, economic and other sufferings. Wilfull ignorance about available and accessible facts. Beyond NO.
What controversy? The "corrected version" wasn't that far off from what actually happened. Still not sure why that story was news, though. Surely, the transportation crisis, climate change, biodiversity loss, wars, the standard of living of Native Americans could be covered instead of this minute instant of a teenager glaring? Other than that, yes, don't tweet and get off social media. Don't post, don't tweet, don't instagram. Just get off. Social media is depressing, reductionist, false, misleading, and dangerous. Just say no.
1
Unfortunately, because our President of the United States uses Twitter instead of news conferences, I feel obligated to read his tweets so I have insight into where our country is possibly heading. I hate how low we have fallen but we need to see it to recognize it. In a way, it’s like “bearing witness”. I actually feel sorry for journalists who must surround themselves with all of this 24/7.
I so wish the New York Times, (for one, though the same goes for Le Monde, The Guardian, FAZ, WP and just about every other quality newspaper) would desist from littering its own web pages with Facebook and Twitter icons, and with injunctions (ironically at the bottom of this very article), to :
"Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram".
Acknowledging the existence of social media need perhaps not entail caving in so supinely, and collaborating (negative connotation intentional) with such alacrity?
1
well done! well said! Twitter is a place where a person is encouraged to be their most feral. It's Lord of the Flies in there 24/7.
I recently wrote a post on my blog explaining to my readers why I was doing the exact same thing as you. Disengaging and removing myself from the news cycle.
The New York Times and NPR are now my only sources of news. Why? Because their news is delivered responsibly and only after the story has fully developed.
Imagine how different the narrative would have been if we had to wait until the morning edition to read about that unfortunate encounter? The NYT would have had the time to allow the story to take shape, sources vetted, and a well-reasoned story presented.
That is what news is supposed to be. Going Live with snippets leads to innacuracy and it is no ones's fault.
Agree. Social media trolls want to ramp up their followers, likes and what have you and are willing to run with any pic or story to serve that end. In addition, angry political hacks have been predators on their virtual bully pulpits. It is all very disconcerting and sad.
Not sure what the title of this column means. Wapo didn't tweet. They immediately dispatched a team to the scene to cover the story. Then they ran with the partial story they picked up at the scene. Then they published it.
1
Flat-out wrong: "Twitter is ruining American journalism." American journalists and their employers, the networks and newspapers, have already ruined it. Raised for decades now in the rarified greenhouse atmosphere of university journalism programs, they have no grasp of the real life most of the rest of us outside NYC lead. Self-praising, sanctimonious, preachy narcissists. It's like a slow-motion car wreck: everybody can see it happening, and none of them involved in it seem to be able to do anything about it. H.L. Mencken and Alfred E. Neuman were right: the new American booboisee -- "what, me worry?" -- reads the NY Times. The rest of us, well, we get along somehow...
3
Actually, the press got it right from the start. The interactions with the African American Israelites was something totally separate from the flash point with the Indigenous Americans. While they were later connected by people's comments, the impression of the 'face off' was exactly right. Covington either gave the MAGA hats to their students, or made them available for purchase as part of their field trip to the Pro Life march. The face off was the young man reflecting to the Native American the smug culture at the vastly white private school.
The constant kowtowing to the right wing by the so called mainstream media is the bigger takeaway here.
By turning everything into a “both sides” argument, (remember who popularized that turn of phrase and when he used it) the media shreds it’s own credibility.
Why?
And BTW . . . Why are Pelosi and Trump seemingly conducting their shutdown negotiations via tweet? Aren’t there more dignified and less petty ways to keep the public informed regarding important policy discussions?
I think we need to stop blaming Twitter for the failure of Covington High School to properly supervise its youth. Twitter did not compel these students to wear partisan political and toxic MAGA HATS. Twitter did not bus some 100 to 200 students from Kentucky to DC and leave them, apparently, unsupervised for perhaps up to two hours. The real story has been missed here. Any Catholic who has attended Catholic School knows that partisan political activity, which the hats attest, is not to be sponsored by a school or church. Social Justice activity and protests in favor or against some injustice are ok. Furthermore, the liability a school or church has for the well being of students is enormous. Leaving these kids in a situation where they could have been harmed or harmed someone is unthinkable irresponsible. The teachers, chaperones, and principal of the school should be fired.
On the subject of Twitter and journalism, yes, irresponsible journalistic reporting of Donald Trump tweets 24/7 in 2016 definitely helped get him over the threshold in electoral votes. Shame on all journalists for taking the easy uncritical way out then--- and now!
1
Perhaps reporters should have actually interviewed all parties involved, in person, while holding notebooks and pens, before writing their stories. They could also have reviewed available video clips. You know, that whole journalism thing.
I understand the pressures journalists are under to respond to events within seconds, but the world could have waited a day or two before making conclusions on this minor event.
1
Twitter is graffiti, for better and worse. After a year I deleted my account.
The Cheetos analogy nails it---eating them is ugly and I don't do that anymore either.
I'm a reader and I'm determined to use my mind. 140 characters & hashtags + likes is a tickertape for the crapstream. Doesn't tell me much.
Serious things are happening. Covington kids or Octomom or cofeve really ain't where the action is.
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@Avenue Be
Cheetos are great! Graffiti is (can be) great! Conciseness? Great! It's people not thinking is the problem!
1
It was gratifying to read this piece. Covering what people say on the Internet, or chronicling its many moods, usually some variation of "going crazy," and especially, larding a piece with strings of actual tweets, seem to me terribly lazy and tacky practices that have started to grate almost as painfully as using "more importantly," "amid" as an all purpose preposition, and pants with the knees ripped open. Disclosure: I do not have a Twitter® account, and confidently predicted when it first appeared that no one but teenagers would ever take it seriously. I do leave comments in online news sites, possibly signifying lingering trauma from my university, having granted me a journalism degree I never used, then abolished its journalism school altogether, replacing it with an academy of mass communications.
I have never understood why the media began publishing anybody’s twitters, particularly Trump’s. He has a whole staff to help him communicate with the country; they can send out press releases,arrange speeches,set up news conferences, In other words help him act like a normal chief executive.
I’ve never understood why anyone uses Twitter, it seems boring and the sheer volume of vapid blather makes it not worth using except for product release announcements.
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Couldn't agree more.
"Have you ever thought of something and NOT said it?"
Twitter indulges our worst instincts, creating keyboard warriors, throwing consideration and cautious reflection to the wind. It's undermined the process of social discourse and elevated the sound bite to new levels of distortion. It took the inanity found in many Facebook threads and amplified it with the simple press of a button. No need to read, just retweet.
Whatever benefits social media offered, with its speed and scope of interactions, have been subsumed by enabling reactive toxicity.
1
Twitter is a cesspool. Facebook is a scam. Instagram is a venue for unabashed narcissism. Until we as individuals get a hold on the underlying desires that these platforms exploit to keep us distracted, anxious and—most importantly for them—consuming, we will drift farther and farther from the real world.
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The real problem with journalism is that overarching themes are created on topics of popular interest and news is curated to support or fall within that. News is rarely organic. It rarely challenges the average users ideas and sensibilities. Journalism is about marketing and selling subscriptions and ads to people who have their views reflected in the media company of their choice. The core of journalism should be for the events of the day to drive discussion instead of having the popular discussion of the day drive what news is.
2
Twitter is nothing more than a means for our current generation to be able to satisfy two of the main forces that drive them, instant gratification and the thinking that everyone's opinion matters and is so important that the world needs to know what I am thinking right now. It is the tool that is used by our president to make policy, to debase anyone who opposes him, and to reach out to the people who are rapt by the cult of personality that he has become. It is no surprise that the world of journalism has gotten caught up in this because of the need to fill 24 hour news cycles that strive to be the first to report on anything. Your thinking is very commendable, but given the way that today's society functions, not very realistic.
4
Unkind things have been committed to text beginning with symbols in ancient times. Twitter is just the vernacular right now.
It’s news unfortunately.
One of the best pieces on the topic. For me this is not about who was right or wrong or even just about the spread of misinformation. It’s the spectacle of supposedly mature educated adults focusing their outrage on this relatively brief non-violent incident when we have the government shutdown, the Russia investigation, the transgender military ban, missing migrant children, violence against Americans in Syria, chaos in Venezuela ... not to mention the broader ongoing questions of income inequality, climate change, rampant gun violence, and the list goes on. I wonder if years from now stories like the Covington saga will be just a footnote in history or will define us.
9
It's not just journalists who should swear off Twitter, it's anyone who claims to be in the business of communicating or seeking to communicate. In other words, everybody.
Social media has become the death of most forms of human communication or of endeavors be they commercial or personal where that communication is the foundation of the activity, including: marketing; public relations; politics; promotion; publicity; child rearing; and, romance.
Genuine communication takes time and effort. The effort to listen and to speak to each other, while enhanced by brevity, concision and speed, is also best practiced with patience and purpose...both of which are shunned by social media.
6
Surprised, well of course not.
Surprised even after dozens of videos proved a completely opposite view, no of course not.
Blatant ignorance and an unamusing shamelessness to see it a way regardless of proof is now, not so surprising.
"Equality demands something of us that most of those screaming refuse to accept much less embrace. It demands we not lift up or suppress based on skintone, sexuality, religious beliefs or national origin". Kadius 1964
Many today have an interest in the fight, it pays well.
1
@Kadius The Catholic students were wearing MAGA hats. That contradicts Catholic teaching. They are hypocrites and should be shamed for it.
I don’t know what went on in DC with the Covington students and the Native Americans. There is no unbiased report that can be relied upon to tell the truth.
What I do know is this incident highlights the failure of all media, social and otherwise. For that everyone must take notice and be wary of the manipulation taking place.
5
I do not use social media like Facebook or Twitter for privacy concerns and because our Facebook account was hacked after a month we were on it. The problem with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc... is that they are misused, overused and abused. The goal of these technologies was originally for people to connect or reconnect. They have their use in case of emergency to contact many at once or lack of time to call or write an email. However, these tools can be dangerous for the people who send posts or those who are on the receiving end. Twitter and the likes can brainwash someone, destroy someone else and confuse many. They should be used sparingly but they are not. People should choose wisely and think before they tweet or post. That lesson starts in school with the children we are teaching because obviously the parents are at a loss since they tweet or post themselves without thinking. God forbid, one should tweet or post to run a country or do diplomacy.... (Could someone take the tweeting machine away from this President?) A day in the nation, in the world without tweets nor posts. What a dream?
2
The social institutions & pressures that made (some) journalism aspire to serve the public while also earning a profit were already crumbling before the spread of the internet or Twitter. But because of the way the internet is (not) regulated, and its businesses therefore designed, all information is pure commodity and no aspiration except clicks and profit are sustainable. Making reform into an individual aspiration to "cut back" or even quit, is a losing game. Legal reform is the only thing that could save journalism and democracy. That may look impossible right now, but democracy has dealt with more entrenched problems in the past.
3
Twitter epitomizes two trends - 1/ anyone can reach more people with a tweet than ever possible and 2/ anyone can say anything they want to the world with at most 256 characters. The good coming out of these two trends is that we can know much more of what multitudes of people feel and think but the bad is that what we tend to read is much more impulsive, much less deliberated. Unsurprisingly, we as a collective feel less civilized, more tribal, less rational, more emotional, less nuanced, more polarized. What is important is to strike a balance - for every minute on Twitter, spend a minute (or two) on long form. That will help us regain perspective.
3
"It prizes image over substance and cheap dunks over reasoned debate."
That's a pretty good synopsis.
6
Twitter has enabled a mob dynamic in which rumor spreads like a California wildfire. It is the antithesis of thinking before you speak. I have never joined Twitter, I have never had any interest in joining Twitter, I won't participate at all in a forum that drowns out rational thought in favor of impulsive emotional response. Even if it sometimes makes me feel good.
6
Well said and your humility is admirable. Having never opened a twitter account I can only relate to what's being presented here through my negative experiences with Facebook. Yes, I'm from that generation that didn't bother to figure out twitter unlike some other oldsters whose tweets are scrutinized and debated daily in the 24/7 cycle.
The narcissism of Facebook is just as bad or worse because of all the nefarious forwarding posts people constantly post. It's an odd sickness and obviously spills into twitter in a big way.
In all fields of endeavor there are the charlatan braggarts who don't do the work but want everyone to acknowledge their wonderful "achievments". It's called insecurity--like the middle-aged guy whose midlife crisis now has him buying a swank loaded pickup truck to prove he's still a virile man.
Yes, it's time to stop convulsing the momentary junk our mind produces through the 165 characters. Amen
5
The author found the words I have felt about Twitter for a long time but haven’t been able to express. The willingness to jump into the fray is a problem for journalists and an irresistible urge for many others. Arguing for the sake of arguing, not for any greater purpose seems a waste of time and energy.
5
What’s missing is how Twitter amplified stories that barely rise to newsworthy if at all. There actually is no “news” on Twitter - it is merely where the President blathers And people react. But it is not reality. I cancelled my Twitter account over a year ago. My consumption of news has not changed, nor do I feel less connected. But I am far less caught up in nonsensical “news” and far less agitated than those pounding out irate and self-important missives on what is literally an electronic cork board.
10
I too closed my Twitter account a year ago. I don’t miss anything about it. I don’t have any issues knowing what’s going on. Daily life experience improved.
I created a twitter account about 6 months ago purely so that I could view what other people are tweeting whose accounts require that you follow them first.
In that time, number of public tweets I have made? Zero.
This is good advice.
6
Never have, never will.
Another reason why I lamented Russell Baker's passing this week, a reminder of when real writers held sway, with informed opinions, insight and wit.
The logorrhea that passes for presidential communications a la Trump should either be banned or ignored by the news corps.
11
I have over 200K Twitter followers. I am a journalist who no longer does journalism. But I recognize it as the important and skilled profession it can be.The ills which this ill-conceived article heaps on Twitter are bred by a much wider change which would require more than a comment to describe. But two related points must be made. First Twitter is what exists and is thus a battleground between those of us who are fighting for liberal, progressive views and an opposition that has every right to the same freedoms we possess. Second, Twitter will never satisfy the needs of the marginalized. I feel marginalized every day because my views are not garnering massive numbers of retweets. I am not alone. If the thousands of folk who have good values and are working for tolerance, helpfulness and democracy were at least given a fairer shake, life would improve. Even with the odds against us, we are winning massively and will win eventually where it counts, at the ballot box. I am very sad to see Twitter made a scapegoat. It is easy to do. And it is both untrue and lazy thinking.
3
@Stephen C. Rose
You feel marginalized because you don't garner retweets? Seriously?
Your side is "winning massively?" Really? You know who else says things like that on Twitter all the time?
My politics probably align with yours in general terms but I'm definitely not in your side.
3
You are wholly delusional. Twitter is a message board, where people are more interested in expressing what they have to say, rather than being open-minded and swayed by convincing arguments. Twitter is not a battle zone - it is a echo-chamber influences by Russian bots, etc. Disengagement is the healthier and more mature option - it is far better for your mental and physical well being.
2
@Stephen C. Rose "If the thousands of folk who have good values and are working for tolerance, helpfulness and democracy were at least given a fairer shake"
Do you see what you did there? It's painting oneself (or ones allies) as somehow morally superior to others that is the entire cause of the problem. It's a subtle but aggressive attack, which makes people attack back. Most of us human are wrong most of the time, especially when we feel most righteous.
1
Interestingly, Bill Simmons had Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on his podcast over the past few days. Dorsey offered a laissez-faire, hands-off policy in relation to his creation, extolling its virtues as a place to learn/grow/communicate freely. What he glossed over - though didn't completely ignore - was how divisive the platform had become.
As to solutions, he offered little solace to those who harbour justifiable fears that this thing that is supposed to be bringing us together is, in fact, creating a maelstrom of hate, discord and untruths that are damaging us irreparably as a society.
The author has the right idea to pull back from the storm and seek calmer waters.
5
I read a book about a woman wo went to live in the wilderness of Maine with her husband. They had a simple life working supporting fishing and lumber camps. They got mail once a month subscribing too a few news magazines and listened to a radio once a week to conserve batteries. Her New York friends asked how she could stand being so out of touch with the world. She responded that they were not out of touch. The world did not need their immediate response. In the time between the news happening and them getting it allowed things to settle and the real story to come out and its importance to be put in perspective. Twitter depends on the news feeding upon itself and everyone injecting their opinion. Taking a lesson from this back woods couple we should allow time for thought and perspective before rendering an opinion. The world does not need our immediate response.
27
I would like to see an article address how the acceleration of communication (in the spirit of Gleick) has affected opinion. Combined with our admiration of quick wit - not just wit - acceleration is bound to cause trouble, as you rightly point out. Trouble started brewing when blogging arose as a means of exposing raw preliminary ideas. Twitter is just another step in the continuum.
The freedom to change one's mind is as important to the concept of "freedom" as the freedom to hold, and express, the original thought. In the company of friends, such things would probably be understood. On the internet, not so much. In the internet, thoughts and opinions, however half-baked, cease to be ephemeral. I may come to disagree with my own comments within a few days, months or years. I may not even remember I aired them. Will anyone else care? The internet will retain the record and judge irrespectively.
9
Well said.
Proud that on Saturday, my first thought was to not give in to my initial reaction and decide to let the event "ripen" over a day or so before forming an opinion. I've got to do more of that.
Bernard Goldberg's expose' of journalistic bias in 2001 is further amplified on Twitter.
I remain undecided if Twitter is a force for bringing light to bias in media or just ensuring its permanent stain.
5
The Internet has ruined everything. I’m glad I grew up before it was invented.
14
@Bruce Crabtree....Not just the internet but also the smartphone, to which people become addicted. I wish that the cellphone had remained just a telephone.
All technologies are first used as weapons. From a stone axe to an ICBM. A global communications platform like Twitter or Faccebook is simply the next weapon.
It is also a tool for building society as is a hammer or a bulldozer. Technology isn't the problem. It's our choice of how we use it that is the problem.
As with most human activities, we will choose the proper uses for this technology. After we've tried everything else.
4
There's a scholarly book called, "How Journalists Use Twitter." The non-profit called Data & Society, and the Knight Foundation, study and report on this topic, too.
Twitter is a megaphone with historic reach and no filter, and they, as a corporation, seem unwilling to change that.
New technology has empowered individuals. That power does come with responsibility, whether or not anyone polices their usage of it.
3
I'm a full-fledged nerd (and have been all my life) but that doesn't mean that I don't stop and think when I discover or am invited to use a new technology.
I'm not on Twitter (and never have been as I sensed that it wasn't going to be something I would find life-enhancing) so it does seem hypocritical that in order ti participate in the column's Q&A requires me to be on Twitter.
I'm not on Facebook for the same reason which minimizes my participation in other venues. But sometimes it means not going along with the herd (or the majority) and I am comfortable with that.
14
Participation in this type of forum diminishes journalism as a profession and gives the profiting stakeholders a way to justify it as a legitimate means of delivering news. Its popularity makes it impossible to ignore, but one can watch pigs in a wallow without actually getting in there with them.
6
It might be OK for journalists who write for a newspaper or magazine to post on Twitter or other social media, but only after going through the editing (including fact-checking) process that their articles and columns do. That would slow things down, and that's sort of the point.
Or maybe have a disclaimer that the post has not been edited, if in fact it has not.
2
I call journalists, celebs and even the president's twitter accounts the "blue check bullies" because that is exactly what they have become. A bunch of people with "verified" accounts telling everyone else what to think. These people should all know better.
People have completely lost their minds on social media. Can you imagine if people behaved that way in public places, yelling their opinions at each other?
Twitter is a social media platform, not a court of law yet a bunch of kids were tried and convicted due to a video clip.
12
I am much more interested in knowing who originally posted this item - - according to what I read that person has posted over 100 times a day is that really normal or does it suggest the person is trying to rile up Aamericans against each other ?
4
I have been a long time proponent of the media not using tweets to communicate and for all our sakes not reporting and discussing every controversial tweet out there. Most especially, no one should have allowed a president to communicate policy via tweets. No one should ever have reported every stupid, provocative thing Individual 1 writes.
The media has voluntarily, knowingly not only contributed to his election but also to the devaluing of people, divisiveness, deterioration of the office of the president by giving attention to that person's shameless tweets, and to the weakening of respect for the country. All for money and titillation - their own self-interest. Does this make the media better than the president who does the same? You use each other.
I beg you to start ignoring twitter! And all twittering by twitty tweeters.
7
Twitter is great for breaking news, virtue signalling and dog accounts.
6
The Covington incident is not news. It is a meaningless personal confrontation elevated by smartphone cameras and social media to symbolic status in the modern culture wars. Serious journalists should be practicing journalism and not wasting their time on such nonsense. They can tweet about real news all they want.
14
Bravo!
Social media in general, and Twitter in particular, represent the Wild West of information exchange -- information, and with it rumor, lies, manufactured content, advertising messages, character assassination -- all of it without any editorial gatekeeping whatsoever. It is a free-for-all, and for those who participate with tweets of Facebook posts, or Instagram images, (I rarely ever do any of these), you are putting your life, and potential someone else's life, in jeopardy. If not your life, your reputation and your good name.
The news media needs to move away from this content fray, as Manjoo urges, not completely, but enough to create a distance of time and judgement.
Once upon a time, when I was a reporter, I would submit enterprise stories to the City Desk. If the piece were controversial, or there were gaps in my reporting (like not enough sources), an editor would sit with me and go over the article sentence by sentence and pointing out what was need to complete the piece fully and accurately.
Today, more than ever, that's not too much to ask for, is it, of daily journalism, at a time when a serial liar resides in the White House and social media has no one in charge, no gatekeeper, no standards, no regard for truth, accuracy or facts, no nothing.
5
Twitter is the saddest place on earth.
10
Other than Facebook ...
1
Somewhere between the phrases I didn't know, the references I didn't get and a total disinterest in Twitter, I enjoyed your writing and point of view immensely. Welcome to the opinion section.
3
A timely and insightful article by Farhad Manjoo. Without a doubt, Twitter is harming the journalistic profession. It is destroying journalistic integrity and shaking America's faith in those reporters who bring us the news.
I have to wonder: Will other journalists listen to Manjoo's warnings? I still remember when Times journalist Maggie Haberman publicly vowed she was quitting Twitter for good. Within hours of her announcement, she changed "leaving for good" to "taking a break." Then, the next day, "taking a break" became "taking a SHORT break." By the end of the week, Haberman was back on Twitter.
4
Amen. So very tired of “journalists” reporting what is shared on twitter as news. It is an echo chamber. It is a private company. It is not the news. Where are the editors? Why do they allow this? I’ve long thought that media professionals have an outsized addiction to twitter. Many (most?) Americans aren’t even on twitter and those that are certainly do not utilize it to the extent of the media.
2
I don't think it's Twitter's fault. Can't its users take a breather before responding to anything? Then what are all these mindfulness practices we have available to us useful for? Lol. Also too, a lot of the Covington kids were wearing that white supremacist MAGA hat, and I've yet to see a news source mention that as part of what provoked reaction from the Black Israelites (the hoteps took things wayyy too far & are not representative of the opinions/beliefs of all Black people) & the Native Americans.
3
How about "think before you tweet?"
7
"Twitter is ruining American journalism."
No, sir. At the certainty of sounding trite as it is, Twitter isn't ruining American journalism, American journalists' reactions to it is. You can't control the platform or what's posted on there by others, but you can control your reactions to it, and your actions. Or if you can't, sporadic virtue signalling by NYT and other journalists (not just you) about quitting (while posting) notwithstanding, you'll forgive those who don't take your reporting quite as seriously as you might wish.
7
Yes, please, stop tweeting "news." Twitter's primary purpose, because it is immediate, is to address one's primordial instincts and raise addictive endorphin levels, and therefore cannot be trusted. I was busy this weekend "having a life" and therefore surprised on Monday to read about this non-event in a column by another New York Times columnist, David Brooks, who said that unless one was "vacationing on Mars" one had to have heard about the incident. I guess I was on Mars, because not only had I not heard, but I still don't know much and don't care and am sick of nonstop four day coverage of this absurdity. Please people, ween your addiction to Twitter and get a life; and if you have to get information on current events, do it carefully, thoughtfully, and from respected journalistic outlets. Not from Twitter or any source that has "gone viral."
10
I saw the story on my twitter feed, and because I know video clips can be interpreted in various ways, I stayed silent. In addition, I don't like littering my twitter feed with politics. I use it for different purposes.
Journalism is no longer journalism? Articles appear to be merely opinion pieces masquerading as something else.
3
Tweeting is only for kids and some presidents.
2
pretty much what Ive been trying to say about the media and the dangers
2
How engaged is the normal (non-journalist, non-political junkie, non-consultant) person with Twitter? Excluding the celebrities and immature fans, it seems the domain of the three named groups firing verbal ICBMs at each other. We only care when news persons bring that garbage into the real world. It is not bad that garbage swirls and flows through the sewers as long as the garbage stays there. The problem occurs when incompetent people share that info. If it is not that tweet about incoming missiles, we don’t need or want to know. Consider Twitter to be the equivalent of a guy wearing a raincoat and no pants walking into the newsroom with a big story. Follow it up and verify it, but tell us nothing until it is rock solid. Any so-called journalist that does otherwise is not a professional.
2
While de-chaining yourself from Twitter seems a very good idea, this below about the MAGA hat kids is just foolish"
"The story seems complicated enough to merit careful analysis, which was unsurprisingly nowhere in sight the few times I checked Twitter this weekend."
It isn't complex or complicated enough to merit analysis at all: Maga hats are actively provocative and that is their expression and purpose. The hats served their purpose, one of which is to confuse columnists to worry over subtle implications.
There are no subtle implications. The Red Hats as a symbol of hate, served their purpose in striking discord and confusion.
3
I checked out Twitter years ago and decided that the only feed worth paying attention to was from "The Onion" so I promptly disengaged from Twitter without ever posting a single tweet myself. I also don't do Facebook, having figured out back in it's early days that as it was free, it needed a way to support itself and that ads alone were never going to be enough to do so. This of course leaves me "out of the loop" whenever therre's some big "to-do" going on but honestly, I don't care. I get to decide for myself what to pay attention to and can wait until the dust settles somewhat to consider what is really happening. I don't jump to conclusions.
I think that ultimately it's the desire to be "the first" to report on something that is fueling this. Along with FOMO of course, not just for individuals but for print media news outlets, TV News, etc. We now expect to hear about news withing minutes of its occurrence. So rather than wait until the facts are in, this need to be first, or at least in the first surge of those weighing in, leads to a dependence on often inaccurate twitter feeds and reports. By then of course the damage is often done. No number of "corrections" can undo the harm done to those falsely vilified.
6
I've have never understood Twitter and why people like it. To my mind, it is a drug. And not just a drug, it is a schedule 1 drug.--the digital equivalent of methamphetamine. Highly addictive and completely destructive.
It does nothing whatsoever positive for society, and is doing a lot to wreck any idea of measured thought or civil discourse.
And I do not agree that leaving Twitter is impossible.
That is nonsense. Of course it is. That's just weak rationalization.
More important than breaking news is factual news. I get far more out of reading The Economist or The New Yorker with a the headlines a week old , but with research and nuance, than worrying about "breaking news" that is often false and/or incomplete. Do these magazines get it right always?
Of course not, but the gulf between them and the Twitter is a massive.
Please stop defending (even partially) the indefensible. Twitter stinks. Fully and completely.
13
Trump rules by tweet. But before the 2016 election he stopped tweeting long enough to allow, say, less than 78,000 voters in three crucial Electoral College states to decide he wasn't, as he was when tweeting, as awful as they had previously thought. I believe this gave him the Electoral College edge to win. Why hasn't anyone else noticed this? Of course, he lost the popular vote.
1
I don't have a cell phone. I don't have a Twitter account. I abandoned Facebook almost ten years ago because I saw that it led to a forced intimacy that mimicked friendship but really was nothing of the kind.
I lived without all these blandishments for many years before they were invented, and seem to be doing just fine without them now.
Perhaps the time is coming when we can reckon that participating in so-called "social media" is a choice and not an obligation?
7
twitter is not "ruining american journalism," any more than facebook is ruining news. I do not have a twitter account. Until the stories about russian activities broke, I did not even know you could get news from facebook. "news' defined as something other than the mundane details of your friends lives. I get my news from rather more old-fashioned places, like the New York Times. which explains why I read this piece. No, neither twitter nor facebook is to blame. WE, the collective consumer writ large, are to blame, and so are those in the journalism business who fall prey to the twitter news cycle. i go on to facebook occasionally, and even that is too much. I do not understand why people need to be on twitter or why I should care what people say there.
9
@local
The only problem with this is that too often, those who should be reporting the "news" are instead both relying on inaccurate twitter feeds themselves and are also guilty of writing editorials cloaked as news. This includes this paper itself, sad to say, more and more.
7
The medium is the message.
Everyone is susceptible to manipulation. Anyone who considers their personal psyche to be immune from such forces is only helping manipulators.
2
Everyone should disengage from Twitter. I have tried to understand what use it is but it seems like a complete and utter waste of resources to me.
10
To Twitter or not to Twitter?
Mostly don’t.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary, Tweet. Otherwise, mums the word.
2
What a joke. Twitter is used by the media and journalists to tout numbers to their prospective bosses and advertisers and the like and milk it for all it's worth.
2
Even the Grey Lady laces its news with twitter feeds from presidents to unknown Joes. I don't read a quality newspaper to hear the reflexive mutterings of miscellaneous people or self-promoters. They're a distraction from reporting, and are worse than useless to understanding the facts or implications of a situation.
Weirdly, often the mere fact that something *causes* a twitter storm is the news. Not the thing itself, but social media's reaction to it. C'mon, where are the standards? Where's the professional pride? Let social media be social media - it can devour itself. Don't let it devour what's left of legitimate media.
Thank you Farhad for your fine article. You're on your way to becoming a great journalist. Hopefully not the last.
7
What if we tried to improve our "inquiry quotient" by just posting questions on twitter? What happened right before this video we are looking at? What happened right after it? What is the source of the video? We need to resist our own biases.
2
It's not hard. Uninstall Twitter. Uninstall Facebook. Uninstall Insta, snapchat, and delete the accounts. I did, months ago, and I don't miss it even a tiny bit.
11
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. It is media's fault for not asking tough questions before publishing stories. There are viral memes every day on Twitter that do not make news. Journalists need to learn a new way of doing their jobs. Also, without Twitter and social media in general, communities of color will continue to be marginalized by mainstream media. Viral stories have brought attention to injustices that would otherwise be swept under the rug. Without social media and its ability to rapidly spread information, how many of us would know the name Trayvon Martin? Without Twitter, a racist referee in Connecticut would have gotten away with making a young biracial man cut his dreadlocks to finish competing in a wrestling tournament. Twitter helps elevate important news, but it also enables the rapid spread of non news and misinformation. Perhaps reporters need to return to journalism rule of thumb: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. Or, in the case of Twitter: If the masses say its true, still, check it out.
4
The great thing about being generally clueless about social media is that I don't have to think about ridiculous things like "tweets".
2
When Twitter first showed up in the MSM I would quit reading as soon as a tweet appeared in an article. That became untenable. I still refuse to read on-going "analysis", such as election coverage, if it is nothing but tweets.
1
I closed my twitter account. I am not on Facebook.
I cut the cable news watching to zero. Yes zero.
I may watch WSJ Editorial report on Sunday and author interviews or panel on c- span.
I still subscribe to NYT, WSJ and New Yorker ( decades long habit) but I am starting to skip anything about collusion, with identity politics flavor and climate change stories that are clearly political, not science.
The world is suddenly much more pleasant place to be.
Journalism evolved and adapted into skill sets of monetizing outrage and self righteous indignation.
Political reporting was addictive like junk food, now it is more like crack. Abstinence is only solution.
18
The problem goes deeper. Here is an excellent article on why journalists love Twitter:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/11/why-journalists-love-twitter
"Given that much of the media consists of content-for-the-sake-of-content, the introduction of Twitter came as something of a godsend to journalists. With 500 million new Tweets rolling in every day, and nearly 310 million active monthly users, Twitter offers a sprawling bank of quotable sources."
In other words, because 21st century publishing requires constant output, there is a need for lots of news. Twitter is terrible, and journalists shouldn't use it, but the source of the plague is how journalists are expected to produce.
Journalists are asked to publish-publish-publish, garbage or not. And why? Because we are in an eyeball economy, where every second that we look means revenue. Papers can't just sell a subscription anymore, they have to fight for your finite attention. So they go to Twitter for something to catch our attention with.
At the core the problem stems from our eyeball economy. I'm waiting, and keep waiting, for our society to wake up to this seismic economic and cultural shift that is changing absolutely everything.
4
Twitter is a virus. It's rotting the core fibers of many societies. Its early heyday as a motor of social change in repressed countries in turmoil--that's all ancient history. We now know it harms. Of course journalists should disengage, along with everyone everywhere. We don't know how to handle it.
3
Wouldn’t it be a sorry day for journalism if news outlets started saying no to Twitter? We’d have to survive without the pithy musings of celebrities, celebrity wanna-bes, Russian bots and our insomniac Current Occupant . . . all dressed up as news. Our attention spans might even change from that of agitated squirrels to discerning seekers of fact and truth. And how could we ever get by with news stories constructed solely of prose and not festooned with Twitter screen shots that repeat elements of the story word-for-word? Ah well. Probably not going to happen in our lifetime.
8
I have spent many years living in communities where my wife and I were the visible minority. I am disgusted by the chants of the fans of the Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins. We know native Americans are as heterogeneous as Europeans.
We also know the culture of prestigious Catholic male academies and I first thought that occured when I saw the video was Bret Kavanaugh.
I initially called the Covington students Kavanaugh's Kids. As the story unfolded my initial impression was confirmed and when the PR firm was engaged it was total affirmation.
Kavanaugh's Kids is the correct name whether it be the elite of Washington's private Academies or the Elite of Cincinnati's pretend religious communities. The values of America's "religious" Elite are the values of William F Buckley Jr and the GOP of Nixon, Reagan and Pence.
I thought the attack on the Gold Star Family, the Khans was beyond the pale but more than to years later America has proved me wrong every step of the way. I know America sold its soul for the promise of Morning in America but it is obvious that despite all the proof America is unable to reclaim its soul despite the realization that the devil has not lived up to his part of the bargain.
It is no way near Morning in America and America is no where close to reclaiming its soul.
When I watch the videos I can feel my brother Jesus weeping. I am saddened that Jesus feels compelled to answer the drum because when he arrives he is forced to weep.
2
Thank you, Mr Manjoo. I am not a Luddite, but I didn't understand Twitter when it came out and still don't. Now we know it's tainting news reporting, spreading hate and damaging our brains by the prevalence of celebrity.
7
My twitter use .... once ....when American Airlines and British Airways lost my luggage.... I nagged and nagged and nagged their (very responsive) twitter responders for 19 days and finally got it back.
Now if they perform well when I travel I will post kudos.
I follow a couple of MSM twitterers ....mainly because they provide links to interesting articles in publications I don’t subscribe to.
I think I have two followers. AA and BA. Works for me.
Nevertheless I clearly, could live without it.
2
Twitter may be "ruining American journalism" but it is a perfect reflection of the human id.
Perhaps rather than harnessing our twitter feeds we should learn to harness our id.
Nah, that won't work.
4
I put little stock in breaking or emerging major news events until I read about them in a publication I trust, which is why I happily pay for my NYTimes subscription and avoid Fox, MSNBC and CNN.
Don't be like those guys. I have never learned anything on Twitter than couldn't have waited for verification and analysis.
2
Agree. And Twitter, for all it's faults, ought to disengage from being Trump's propaganda arm...tacitly agreeing to be the loudspeaker of lie after lie, to confuse his base and keep it captive from waking up and finally seeing reality, and the truth, based on facts instead of fiction.
1
To "Never Tweet," I would add don't use snapchat, instagram, facebook and all the other social media. They are monetizing their users' attention, and their users, as Mr. Manjoo acknowledges, are their dupes and their product. The harm that social media does greatly outweighs the benefits they offer.
3
In particular, please ignore Mr. Trump's Twitter account. I am quite serious about this. We will all be better off if we don't have unfiltered access to his whims of the moment.
5
Amen.
I backed all the way out of Twitter because, like Mr. Manjoo, I felt I couldn't control myself. I was like an alcoholic around alcohol. I had to have more rage and outrage.
I unfollowed everyone and left my account for three months then deleted it, cringing that I was letting go of an account I had made in Twitter's infancy, back when I couldn't figure out for what it might be any good. I had held that account from the joyful time when I realized much of what Twitter could do until I realized what Twitter has become.
There is really only one Twitter user of note now. I wish it was Capt. Andrew Luck, but it's the awful thing squatting in the White House. I have very little to do with Twitter any more. Less and less with each day.
2
People in this country are talking too much--about all the wrong things. We are picking fights with one another, getting fatter as we sit and tweet and resolving no issues. Less talk more action.
Farhad Manjoo, I truly thank you for this piece. Out in another paper, today, I read another opinion piece by an author who's sole purpose was to focus on how bad those boys really were. It's such an immense relief to see your point of view, which I whole heartedly agree with. I don't know a thing about those boys because I do not know them and I wasn't at the event. My horror (especially as someone who's chosen never to get involved with Twitter for all the reasons you state here plus a few more) lies with the implicitly social acceptance of mob mentality directed at a boy, a group of boys, the boy's school, their families, their town, and the groups of adult protesters they all came into contact with.
It's like the Salem Witch Trials for some new victim or group of victims of social media every dang day. It really has nothing to do with partisanship and everything to do with psychology, emotions, and the worst of human instincts.
Good for you for upping your game and slowing you're tweets.
5
If only journalists could stop examining their own navels, as exemplified by this column.
I'm still waiting for some solid reporting that documents clearly HOW these 150 young white men from Covington KY came to be in Washington DC that day, WHAT was the educational rationale for a field trip by an all-boys school to engage in a political rally aimed at women's reproductive rights, and WHY they were roaming the National Mall all day with minimal adult supervision.
15
Agreed. Twitter is for friends sharing stories.
That sage philosopher Lewis Black said it well a number of years ago now, with his patented sarcasm: "I am buying shoes! I must tell the world!"
Meanwhile, Twitter keeps sending me e-mails telling me how I'm missing out... and the only reason I opened an account at all is because it was a online course assignment... yes, really...
4
I have literally never met anybody who uses Twitter. I honestly think it's all just journalists (and the president) tweeting at each other.
1
I don't have a problem with Twitter.
In the case of the Covington youth, they acted in a threatening manner to an elder and upset him. The context was heinous: being transported to a rally on a political issue for adults; they debased a group of young girls, they have hired a PR firm within hours of being in trouble and the whole ongoing media coverage is biased a la Kavanaugh. Our culture is sick and sickening. Twitter is fine for balanced sane people - fun even.
3
I enthusiastically second the comments of Livonian. Mr. Manjoo's comments are correct and necessary, but not sufficient. Social media is enabling and speeding the demise of civil behavior, and should be avoided completely.
2
What exactly is the value of twitter communication? What is the benefit of everyone blasting out their opinions, misconceptions, inaccuracies, etc. to the world? How much of twitter content is based on informed knowledge? How much of it is junk because people spread deliberate false or mistakenly unverified information? It helps create an online bullying mob - one that never faces any consequences for the damage wrought. It creates a lot of noise that any community or society on Earth can do without. Only a small portion of twitter is used to propagate useful information on a disaster. Probably everyone, not just journalists, needs to cut down on its use. Who has time to read up on someone's opinions? Get on with your own life and seize back your time because that time is the most expensive commodity anyone has in their life.
4
Would you base your thoughts, opinions or decisions upon a 30 second commercial on TV? Well that's what Twitter is doing to people. Assessing situations and life in general in soundbites.
Checking where your news sources are coming from is always a good idea or consideration.
2
Yes, tweeting has disrupted journalism, and nowhere more so than at the Great Lady: Front page news STILL begins far to often with a Trump tweet; stories are filled with Tweet "quotes" (implying no Q&A between reporter and source took place); and worst of all, stories are filled with narrative quotes of Tweets only to be followed by screenshots of the actual Tweets and their little birdies. Do we really need that? Actual digging and sourcing-- which I know the NYT reporters are good at-- seem to be on the decline, except for those stories that are really scoops, information you can't get elsewhere. More of those please, and leave tweets to the birds.
2
We can all live fulfilling lives without Twitter. We used to. Just stop.
4
"the Covington story made one thing clear: Twitter is ruining American journalism."
Twitter is ruining American LIFE! (as is Facebook)
5
Think first, then speak (or tweet). Don't blame twitter, if you do then next it's the pen, and then the voice that we blame.
1
Excellent piece. The values of free speech, reasoned debate, intellectual honesty, empathy and balance are nowhere to be found. As has been widely published, there were actually supposedly progressive adults saying these children should be fed to a wood chipper or beat down. Twitter is the 21st Century equivalent of a lynch mob, and I think it is increasingly coloring the views and opinions of journalists (and the public) in ways that are entirely inconsistent with the previously held journalistic norms. While I agree typically with many things in the NYT, I do believe that it has, in the last 15-20 years, started to slant or bend its journalism in ways consistent with its ideological bent--including in the stories it chooses to cover, the wording of headlines, and even the language it elects to use. I cant help but think that this is driven, in part, by the desire to satisfy to the mostly liberal NYT readers who no longer value neutrality in their reporting as they perhaps once did (thanks to the tribal nature of social media which rewards group think and punishes opposing viewpoints), and by the human nature of journalists, who see and read and hear what the commentators, Twittterverse, and pundits are saying and can't help but be swept up in, or influenced by, the mob mentality at times.
2
I’m on Twitter maybe 10 minutes a day and so far haven’t been corrupted, brainwashed or otherwise reduced. It’s difficult for me to understand people whose lives are harmed, or even ruined, by it.
Absolutely! Get the serious thinking before "tweeting" back. Life is not a video game.
3
I think everybody should disengage from Twitter. I have honestly never seen anything so useless in my life.
3
Yes, yes, yes... I’m so glad you wrote this. It is certainly swimming against the swiftest, most unrelenting tide, but it is a position long overdue. Thank you and please persist! We need more dispassionate, considered journalists. We do not need more knee-jerk opinionistas of any stripe. Cheers!
1
"You don’t have to quit totally — that’s impossible in today’s news business."
That's funny, because it sure seems as though there are plenty of excellent journalists who never mention Twitter as a source.
2
Twitter will not ruin us. We might ruin ourselves, however, using Twitter as a tool. if Twitter weren't available, we'd simply find another tool to self-destruct.
2
Amen. and Amen.
common sense.
which means,
of course,
that no one
in journalism
will pay any
attention to it.
3
Too late. The genie is already out of the bottle, and there's no going back.
But we would do well to be more skeptical about the blasts of news flooding out of social media. Some writers get their facts wrong. Some have an agenda.
The problem isn't the tweets. The problem is excessive gullibility and rush-to-judgment among readers. There's a sucker born every minute.
We don't need to stop tweeting. We just need to slow down and think.
This is remarkably insightful and valuable, and I can't believe it was written by the same person who suggested we should open our borders. Are we being trolled?
6
For the same excellent reasons, we all need to step away from ALL social media. As soon as I my friends started posting their outrage du jour, I tried to tell some people who I hoped would listen that, as we've seen over and over, one can't make a snap judgement based on one shared video of an event.
So now they're defending themselves with the same argument a Duke professor made about the LaCrosse team: If they didn't do it, they could have. This one was the last straw. I've given up.
9
I would posit that politicians should decline to twitter or tweet. There is already so little dignity extant in our public quarters that stooping to this level devalues whatever shreds of it we have left.
5
I can't agree enough that journalists should dump twitter. I've never seen good journalism come from it. Some sick burns and great jokes, but no scoops.
That said, I'm bothered that nobody seems to have mentioned the absolutely defining thing about the Covington Confrontation: the "language" of bodies and space. The kid didn't give the old guy some space. When his his younger, stronger body was in the guy's way, he, umm, stood his ground, when there was a whole lot of other spaces he could have politely stepped into.
There were two extra reasons to give way and stand back, besides the usual reasons of simple politeness when somebody is walking in your direction: a little respect for age, sensitivity to an older person's fragility; and respect for somebody putting on any kind of performance. That requires a little more space, and no interposition between performer and audience.
It would have been more legitimate to boo! If you hate the performance, that's a custom. But standing right in front of a singer so people can't see him, it's just really rude.
Combine with the race of the singer, and the hat that has come to mean "I support white supremacy" and I've got no sympathy for the kid at all. My Dad would have grounded me until I was 18.
There is no context or additional viewpoint that can get around that, for me.
1
I finally pulled the plug on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I won't say that is was easy. I get calls from friends asking about an event they thought they invited me to only to hear that I'm not in social media and that I missed the invite. It's only been two months but I can now read 3 out of 4 New Yorker magazines each month. It doesn't seem like that big of a victory but I now I feel like I have all the time in the world!
2
"Everything about Twitter’s interface encourages a mind-set antithetical to journalistic inquiry: It prizes image over substance and cheap dunks over reasoned debate, all the while severely abridging the temporal scope of the press."
Sounds like the description of American democracy, where soundbites and memes pass for contest of ideas and reason. I guess this explains why we have a Twitter President.
3
I enjoy Twitter, but I'm a lurker, not a tweeter.
It is illuminating to contrast the political content and impact of Twitter with that of comment sections in national newspapers. The content of the two media are fairly similar: some new information or context for news articles, lots of mis- and disinformation, lots of ids & egos sweatily duking it out on the Internet. However, the impacts of the two are completely different: Twitter is very influential, but the comments sections of national newspapers have virtually no measurable impact on anything except participants' work productivity. Odd.
"Twitter will ruin us, and we should stop" does not fully embrace the problem. It's more than just journalism, though your bias is understandable.
Twitter is a promotor of division. Twitter is driving the entire nation over a cliff, and if the nation goes over, the world will likely soon follow.
Now is the time to recognize Twitter for the destructive force it is. Now is the time for reputable individuals to abandon the site and not look back.
4
I don’t want to sound like I’m above the fray but I guess I will. I don’t have a Twitter or Facebook account. There are plenty of places to get the news. I understand that people want to be informed. I went hiking in the Grand Canyon today. A beautiful clear and cold day. There’s about a foot of snow on the rim, pretty much out of it by about a mile down the trail. It was a little windy today. The ravens had fun in the swirls along the rim and outcroppings. The shadows moved with the changing sunlight as the day progressed. Not many people below the rim this time of year. Nor are there cell signals down there. I got home, made dinner and checked the NYT. All that news that happened today, all the breaking stuff that I missed, all that stuff that I can’t do anything about, still happened. Maybe next time I’ll wait until the next morning to check the news.
15
Twitter is bringing out the worst in many journalists. When I told a journalist, "Edward R. Murrow was right: journalists have thin skins." He immediately attacked. He didn't have a thin skin, he said. His multitude of ensuing tweets seemed to put the lie to his claim. Twitter is no place to try and have an in depth discussion and yet even when given options many reporters stay with Twitter. The inquisitive journalist, the seeker of truth, was so fixated on arguing his position that he never did learn how I perceived the stare-down between the teen and the Native American.
2
@Ken Wightman Why should Americans take heed in the smug criticisms of disengaged and disingenuous foreigners?
It doesn't appear humans are any better than the dogs trained by Pavlov.
The truth is there's very little news any of us need to know right now. The stock market goes up and down, revolutions happen, business leaders fail, politicians waffle along.
A tweet might be good for a fire or some bad romaine lettuce but otherwise I much prefer to read a well thought out article or opinion in a monthly magazine or the NYTimes. It's more than enough.
It's much better to be fully present with the people next to you or with the work you are doing than salivating over the next Tweet, Instagram or Facebook post.
11
At this juncture I am not sure it matters whose narrative on Covington is correct. But I do think the less journalists use Twitter the better--even though it is clear that we will all have to learn to live with the lies. Just like photo and audio files can be faked, the same will hold true for the couple of sentences spouted on Twitter.
This is not about a serious difference of political opinion. This is not about a legislative solution. It is about the avoidance of one-liners, avoidance of overly simplistic "common sense" (usually anything but. particularly in the political sphere) arguments. It is about the urge to respond quickly, often without much forethought, in a confined space.Since we appear programmed to feed off such comments, avoidance will not be easy--not for our citizens or politicians.
Major news networks could start by taking competing tweets off their main screens during news reports. They will not do this if they feel their bottom line profits are jeopardized.
2
I honestly do not know what happened with the Covington incident beyond what I've read in the NYT. I don't have a Twitter account, I was not there, and I have not watched any video on the incident. But engaging high school students is ridiculous. The vast majority, if not all, have not developed sufficient experience and critical thinking skills to argue beyond what they've heard from their parents and peers. So, there is that.
As far as the clamor over this article, I'm grateful for it. It is time someone pointed out that referring to tweets is not journalism. Worse still is printing the tweets themselves as though that is investigative reporting. Half the "journalists" out there have no credentials beyond contributing to trash sites like Buzzfeed, Vice, or Vox, and using tweets is likely one of the top sources they use. I realize that journalism is suffering in the "information age", but cannot something be done to restore journalistic integrity?
4
Every time I think I should get on a social media website, I remember the old song lyrics: "Got along without ya before I met ya, gonna get along without ya now." NPR and desk-top explorations for a couple of hours/day are as much as I need of the modern world. I love intervals of silence!
7
It's not just twitter, and it's not just social media. The news establishment itself is sinking, coming apart. It has become a major distributer of a new kind of addictive substance. Given the demise of newspapers, and the rise of online news, it had to adopt a new business model in which the business and news departments are merged. In this regime, the goal is to get clicks because clicks = revenue. This means publishing what will get the most clicks and keeping readers clicking as often as possible. And this requires constantly generating NEW news--even when there really isn't any.
To make the non-news look essential requires defeating a reader's judgment and targeting vulnerable parts of the brain, feeding it highly emotional images and stories that override other concerns. There is a science to this and data collection and analysis for this, and they allow news sites to provide the stimulation that the brain will go on seeking and seeking. The poor readers go on looking and looking, chasing the dragon. clicking and clicking, even against their will.
I don't think an intervention is possible. I also don't see how we will ever get the news back. Fake news is part of the business plan.
13
@Nathan
I imagine the only hope resting in a kind of social awakening to the many, many negative consequences that come from this new type of "addictive substance". The eyeball economy is a lot like the junk food economy; it is wildly successful because it taps into something very primal. But when the consequences are dire enough, as was with junk food and as is with addictive media, we can all have a collective conversation and begin to move together towards better choices and demanding better content. Like junk food, it'll never fully go away and the most vulnerable populations will be its biggest target, but it can get much better. Better enough that a Covington saga shouldn't become front page news everywhere.
That's the hopeful scenario...
1
I think it's time we admit that this social experiment has failed and end it before any more harm is done.
9
Tell that to its shareholders.
Excellent piece.
As someone who spends too much time on Twitter, I read the column looking for something to disagree with - looking for something to dunk on Farhad, in the parlance of Twitter. I don't think Jack Dorsey or the other people behind Twitter set out to build something pernicious, but it's hard not to conclude that the social network has been, on balance, a destructive force in our discourse - is it any wonder it's our horrible president's preferred form of communication?
In addition to what Farhad pointed out re: journalists and Twitter, I also find a very off-putting clubbiness within the ranks of journalists who spend a lot of time on the social network (that is to say, most of them). To an extent, I get it - professional collegiality is a thing across all occupations. But in this case, it trivializes the news, and subsumes it to the narratives, the "takes," the dunks...very meta and very inside-baseball. A commodification of the news in the service of being part of the cool kids club.
3
The question is, "What is professional journalism, anyway--and how does its practice differ from the open-mike, everything-photographed world we all live in?"
In its narrowest heart, professional journalism is the principled practice of communicating what the public has a RIGHT to know, and a NEED to know--and determining what those rights and needs are is in the hands of those "principled professionals."
This, of course, is an idealized, sorta-textbook definition of journalistic practice--one that has never been perfectly delivered by any organization's chain of senior and desk-level editors, reporters, and support staff who deliver the goods. And with very few exceptions, those practitioners have never fully been the masters of their own craft, since first newspapers, then radio stations and networks, then television, all were capitalized and run for profit by "someone else."
Ironic in extreme that now, in the internet era, any bloke with a smart phone or podcast setup can now publish and distribute, unencumbered by all the apparatus--but so can everyone else, including insomniac elected officials, Catholics, Native Americans, and black people proseletyzing for a fringe religion. And when the latter "hit the sweet spot," they have the satisfaction of Going Viral, perturbing the whole public sphere and entraining the tag-along Professional Journalist as well.
This is all both liberating and confining--and Mr. Manjoo's advice to his fellow journalists is well-voiced.
3
It is nice to see a well-written article. On any topic, really. Word-smithing, turns of phrase, cogent logic, humility, cultural references. There is joy and satisfaction as well as information to be shared and gained from such things. Things you will never find on Twitter.
-
"Tweets are for Twits" - pithy and spot on.
6
I might consider Twitter if they kicked trolls like Trump off of the platform. Absent that, it convinces me that their business model is to whip up hate to drive hits.
Even if it were not doing that, the fact that comments are limited to 280 characters means that complexity or nuance in discussing a problem is impossible. Truth be told, virtually all issues are not black or white. This is not a viable platform for people to discuss increasingly more complex issues that face our world. It just plays into the hands of demagogues, like Trump, who have never read a book that contains words, nor tried to look at the long term consequences of an immediate action.
4
Well-written and heartfelt, but I think the genie is permanently out of the bottle and society has permanently been transformed for the worse by social media. I think it's a done deal. Having said that, Beclowned is now my very favorite word.
9
I often joke Twitter is only used by people paid to use Twitter. I've finally found supporting evidence. The technology exists as a certain type of business platform first. Everything else is peripheral. Sending out intimate personal information on Twitter is roughly equivalent to sending out too much information on the company email. Good for you but we don't need to know. Don't hit reply-all next time.
What has become professionally required within media is almost comically unprofessional anywhere else. Another joke is how we don't send a junior employee to outside the country without a breathalyzer on their technology. Friends don't let friends text drunk. Especially not when the CEO is blind cc'd on the thread.
Twitter is one big drunken conference where everyone else has to listen to the call. Thanks but I'd rather not. Even the in-content Twitter format choices for traditional media are obnoxious. I've intentionally avoided the word "journalism" because I think the term implies too much respect for the Twitter platform. We're talking about a multi-media chat device. Nothing more.
Would-be journalists need to get over it.
6
None of my friends are regular twitter users, I imagine it is the same with many NYTimes readers. Anyone I knew that did use it left after their first pointless feud. Yet we are subjected to learn of the daily whims of this platform simply because many journalist are addicted to it. To make matters worse, "the left" is now supposedly defined whatever the loudest group of impulsive people are saying on Twitter.
Twitter is not news, what people say on twitter is not news. More people watch QVC, more people use reddit, yet we are not forced to learn the daily minutiae of happenings on those platforms.
To amend the title: Never Tweet, Never Write About a Tweet.
15
In all honesty, this sounds like a physician in the mid 20th century advising patients to smoke cigarettes only in moderation.
If Twitter, as you rightly say, ruining American journalism it's simply inadequate to reduce your consumption and hope that issuing a warning to others will be enough to stave off a moral reprieve.
You must quit the platform entirely and instead be part of a new media contingent that shows the nation how it's possible to be a journalist without a connection to social media.
You've correctly identified yourself as a Twitter addict, but the solution to addiction is not moderation. In the case of a journalist faced with a harmful it is instead to act bravely and decisively in the public interest -- and in your own.
15
I deleted my Facebook account on 7-15-10 and have never looked back. I left Facebook to protect myself from those who weaponize Facebook. I deleted my Twitter account 6 months ago for similar reasons. There is no looking back-I stick to LinkedIn and keep it to business!
6
In a world with so many physical threats and dangers, it's terribly ironic that nothing fills me with fear and despair the way Twitter does. It's a gateway to view people at their absolute worst: cruel, vile, and unforgiving. I believe every study out there that claims social media is connected to depression and anxiety, because I see in myself as well as the people around me. Unfortunately, this extends beyond Twitter, or at least it does for me. Even here in the comments section on The Times, I tend to find myself wondering what the point is of talking to anyone if I end up spending the next several hours nervous that I'm going to get an enraged response from a stranger that's going to be here for me to fixate on until the end of time.
Maybe it's just me, and I'm not cut out for the internet. But judging by what I've seen over the years, it does look like there are plenty of other people that are familiar with this kind of gloom.
3
It's not just just Twitter but all other forms of so called "social media." But, they're just mediums that get stuff out quickly to the masses. And why the insatiable need to get this stuff right now, no matter how accurate and factual? Because, it's a quick and short snipit of what translates as news, except that it isn't. It's the need to know. If, as Marshall McLuhan stated, television is a hot medium, Twitter is a raging inferno. It is shaping human behavior in ways we are still are trying to understand.
Remember the good old days where the TV station vans laden with satalite dishes were all the rage to get to the scene. Well now, there are hundreds of millions of miniature "transmission towers" eagerly wanting to get their message out, no matter how trivial, meaningless and most likely inaccurate. Who cares. Just give me something I can comment on, share with "friends" or fume about sitting alone at home. Until that next tweet of course. And so on, and so on and so on........ Critical thinking out, indignation in. Context out, immediate judgement in.
While reading this I was reminded by David Wallace Foster's commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005 titled "This is Water". I will not elaborate any more than this because it may be in your best interest to both seek it out and listen to it. It is directly related to what is going on in the US and so problematic these days.
"Never Tweet" should be more than an individual journalist's private hope to exercise more willpower.
It should be an ethics and public health concern for society, technology workers, the journalism industry, education, and regulators.
Although new technology brings some new boons and challenges, others are familiar. We know strategic silence can be important to protect truth (fact-checking), public health (minimizing copycat crimes, such as suicides), and democracy (resisting manipulation).
Now, however, editors and publishers aren't gatekeepers for mass messaging. To navigate our way - not just to play hot potato with responsibility but to move towards a better world - it really will take collective effort from the bottom to the very top.
4
Humanity at large should disengage from twitter, er al. Just think, we can protect the entirety of our democracy from international misinformation by simply signing off of facebook. And yet... random shouts into the void are more important apparently.
7
I've been so disgusted by Donald Trump's and Vladimir Putin's manipulation of social media to spread lies and misinformation that I have abandoned all platforms -- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram ... I remember what life was like when falsehoods were not instantaneously disseminated to millions of people before anyone could fact-check them.
A cousin of my 81-year-old mother used to spread all kinds of paranoid conspiracy lies on Facebook, which she would dutifully fact-check and respond to. But after years of this behavior, she gave up exhausted. What's the point, when the rumormongers want only to sow confusion and hatred?
A propaganda outfit posing as a legitimate journalistic operation would have been unthinkable before FoxNews (the TV equivalent of Twitter -- without the valuable links to primary sources), because professional reporters would have quickly exposed their false and reckless reporting. It's not hard to find the solid facts behind the sensationalism. But the real tragedy for American democracy is that citizens don't care about what's real. They're just (blood-)sports fans who want their team to "win," disregarding the rules of the game in favor of perpetual chaos.
7
I never use Twitter, personally, but I understand for certain personal and professional purposes they can become close to indispensable. So let me suggest as simple rule:
IF there's ANY objective ambiguity in a matter, whether story, picture or video, DON'T tweet about it.
The smile on the face of a teenager is a classic example of an inherently ambiguous matter. Is he smug, embarrassed, friendly, deceptive, confused or something else? You can't possibly know, and if you think you do, you are looking in a mirror, not at the teenager. The more you feel certainty and strong emotion about a matter that intellectually and objectively you should know is ambiguous, the more certain it is you are wrong and will be doing harm, harm that is easily avoided by simply staying silent.
Silence and patience (for example, before reaching conclusions with far-reaching consequences) are vital virtues fundamentally inconsistent with our modern electronic media. We must retrain ourselves in these virtues, more than ever before as a counterweight to these new electronic loudspeakers.
10
I thought I needed to be on-the-spot topical to be informed and relevant. Turns out that a hothead like me is more in need of a deep breath, reflection and a nuanced response. Call me self righteous, but I have no regrets for my long-dormant Twitter account.
7
Outrage generated and spread within social media is a far more powerful phenomenon than we would like to admit. Once sparked, it takes on a life of its own and can wreak havoc, and we have yet to establish an accepted societal response procedure to adequately handle
it. News outlets have an especially significant responsibility to protect against the excesses of viral outrage. Yet, as the line between news media and social media increasingly blurs it becomes harder for news outlets to firmly maintain their
position as impartial purveyors of objective information. All too often news outlets allow themselves to be swallowed up in the tide of any given wave of outrage.
When outrage spreads on social media, especially when the target is perceived to be racist or sexist, journalists too often immediately fall in line with the outraged. Media outlets tend to uncritically report on the outrage in such a way as to
fan its flames and ride its wave. They feed their articles/videos back into the viral firestorm to effectively receive more shares, more clicks, and thus more revenue, all
the while conveniently appearing to claim a moral high ground. The duty to provide a fair portrayal takes a backseat. Journalists are incentivized to not look too closely,
to assume the outrage is justified, and to ultimately legitimize the outrage lest they also become its target.
It is very heartening to see journalists becoming aware of this problem and stepping up to fortify themselves against it.
11
I’m surprised this even needs to be said. I stopped watching CNN when they started using Twitter as the basis of some of their reporting. I have stopped watching other news shows that feel as though Twitter is a viable source. I’ve started reading the newspaper more because, at least, if a Tweet is mentioned, it is usually not as a source, rather as part of the story. We’ve all been convinced that this “medium” is somehow now an essential fixture of our society, our culture and our lives, when it’s simply a colossal (even that word understates) waste of time. When the history of the social media era is written, Twitter will rank among the worst ideas ever to reach the mainstream of civilization.
22
@Tim Macklin Whenever I see a story that starts with "Twitter Storm Over ...," I immediately think: 1) lazy reporter sits at desk and reads tweets; 2) so he hears only the loudmouths; 3) a few dozen, or even a few hundred tweets don't amount to a hill of beans in this world; 4) the story not only perpetuates the phony news story, it legitimizes it.
Since the author is a technology writer, he must be especially dismayed to see the way technology, especially communications technology, can be misused, by those with foolish or malicious intentions. Albert Speer had some pointed words of warning on this same subject of communications technology, which he delivered during his Nuremberg sentencing allocution. In Speer’s day, the new Tech was radio, not the internet. But the potential for misuse of tech through bad behavior was there, even then. Today, as before, it’s important to warn people of the very real dangers which lurk in this world’s technology. Thank you for this article.
200
@Scott Anthony It's important to warn people before it spreads like the influenza virus and inoculate them to the possible dangers. We test food (when there's no shutdown) and medicine before we let it out on the market to see if it will harm the public. We frequently have recalls of products after they are on the market if found to be dangerous. We ignore all but the physical dangers to our society. People with imaginations discover ways to make tons of money for themselves by designing new technology, marketing it aggressively, and convincing most everyone else that they can't live without it. Surely, other people have imaginations to predict what is at the other end of a tunnel most people don't have the time or the knowledge to navigate without actually going through it. If scientists are able to figure out what must have happened billions of years ago as the universe formed and what will happen in the next hundred years due to climate change, surely the same sort of mind can figure out beforehand that if you are limited to communicating in 140 (or 280) characters, your ideas will be shallower and less well defended. Events and people will be labeled rather than discussed. And if analysts can draw those conclusions, they can warn about them, find a charming spokesperson (like a Bill Nye on climate change) to promote that warning. The government doesn't have to ban anything if the issue is brought to the fore early enough to do something about it besides banning.
7
You raise a critical issue which merits ongoing dialogues-"real dangers which lurk in this world’s technology." Communication technologies, of whatever planned and unplanned outcomes, don't have a "mind" or "will" of their own.They are, and can be, used and misused by a range of individual and systemic agendaed stakeholders. In the continuum of more to less democratic---undemocratic/ authoritarian socio-eco-religio-political systems. From the family to the neighborhood/community to the nation. To our global realities which each of us enable. In smaller and bigger ways. Being accountable as well as NOT.
6
@Scott Anthony
I couldn't quite place just why this issue of the 'smirking' teen vs the 'elder' indigenous was so bothersome to me. But I knew it had something to do with the instant and furious assignation of intent to the teen's expression.
Turns out Aldous Huxley foresaw that and even gave it a Newspeak name : Facecrime. The short definition is
'to wear an improper expression on your face', which was 'itself a punishable offense'. Why have none of the learned and erudite NYT writers referenced this chilling definition of what happened in this situation ?
61
Twitter strips communications of nuance and detail in pursuit of immediacy. Whether you're a journalist or not, dependence on a shallow, fleeting text stream ultimately trains the brain to crave a quick hit rather than a deep dive.
It's like a bag of Cheetos. You KNOW it's not good for you, but you can't stop consuming it.
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@Elizabeth A You're actually spot on with this. Neurologically, our brains rewire to process this fire hose of information blasting at us. We focus less, our deep dives are more shallow. We skim more. Our attention span fragments.
Check out The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains for a rather frightening look at how we've been rewired in the last 30 years to think and behave.
It's telling that the developers of all this social media and engagement services are blocking their children from accessing it. They know what they've created and are starting to realize the impact of it.
33
Some of us can make the active choice. And sustain it. In our various roles. In a range of contexts. Environments. Some of us can't. At a given time. Or, perhaps, always. Given who and what we are. As flawed humans. Whatever our self created, as well as socially imposed identities. Learned appropriate and inappropriate behaviors. Coping. Adapting. Functioning with our Do's and Don'ts. Learning from them or not. Each of US is more than just our brains, whether one- a total BE ing capable of BE coming... "craves." "Desires." "Wants." Experiences as a learned "need." The man-made semantic surrealism of empowering "addiction," "dependence," and "habits" continues to enable each of us to cop-out from the consequences of the opportunity to learn how to create sustainable, "healthier" daily choices. Not an easy task or challenge. Learning to make a difference that makes a difference, for ourselves, and for others, goes beyond tweeting. Or not.
@Elizabeth A. “...in pursuit of immediacy” ? Actually, in pursuit of “likes” would be the more honest and accurate reason, I believe. The author acknowledged his thrill of validation as the “likes”’rolled in; we have only to look at our current president to see how this addictive practice is rewarded by likes and followers. He will never break his addiction, but maybe others can, and will. Though, free-free-free, free access is indeed the devilish enticement to popping the drug, er tweet.
1
“ I Tweet, therefore I am. Stupid “.
Just say NO.
6
It is not just Twitter, but the younger generation's dependence upon smart phones for incessant texting, Instagram and other social media. They have lost judgement and reflection, because they have become reactive bots. And it has now even extended to adults, who don't know when to shut it off and focus on what is happening in the moment. Taking the Covington incident as an example, what kind of a chaperone, let alone a school administrator would not have the foresight to see that wearing MAGA hats on a school trip (where they represent their school) is entirely inappropriate? Second, to further illustrate my point, Mr. Sandman (the Covington student in the standoff) was undoubtedly aware that he was being filmed and probably was acting to look good on camera. In a normal situation, a teenager would be questioning what is going on, trying to defuse the situation and perhaps say something like, "Hi, I mean no harm. It's those guys who are causing trouble. What's that beat you're playing?"
How many times do you see people today communicating in the normal sense of "Madam, would you like to take my seat?" Today, teens do not even carry on conversations on buses and have all kinds of social anxiety diagnoses, because they think they must be constantly connected to their on-line world where they have an aspiration to be "liked" (by strangers) and a social reputation to keep up.
Just turn it off already, and live in the present.
11
Social media has little value. You can tell because nobody is willing to pay to use it. They need to give it away for free in order to get people to show up. It’s the people who then produce the value, not the network.
I’ve stopped engaging with media I’m not the customer for. If I didn’t pay for it, it doesn’t serve me. It serves someone else.
That’s why “somethingawful” is a gem of a website, but 4chan is trash. It’s why the NYT and the economist are worth reading, but fox and CNN aren’t. You get what you pay for.
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@Zachariah Propublica is pretty darn good, though. And free.
17
@Zachariah indeed, if you're not the customer, you're the product.
24
@Zachariah I'd argue the BBC, The Guardian, Agence France Presse, The Hindu and Deutsche Welle (among others) are worth reading. And they're free.
11
The Twitter storm was despicable, but no more so than the media rush to judgement on both the Covington kids and Nthan Phillips. Twitter merely piled on in both directions and the result was exactly the trainwreck you might anticipate. Too bad it is now too late for cooler appraisals to move the meter. Twitter has become an abomination and not a source for dialouge.
6
The public should disengage from Twitter, but that is not going to happen.
3
I'm 58 years old. What is this Twitter thing you speak of ;)? Then again I'm not on Facebook or that Insta thing-ama-jig either. I'm doing fine in case you all are wondering...
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The world would be a much better, kinder place without Twitter.
On July 7th, 2016, I was about to go to bed, when I heard that there was an ongoing shooting in downtown Dallas and police had been the target. For some reason, I thought, "You know, I bet Twitter has more up to date announcements about this than the networks." Then I created an account and found out I was correct. But I also saw a despicable amount of terrible hate speech and mis-representation of what was happening. Yes, it felt as if I was somehow closer to the event than traditional news . . . it was just awful.
I should have cancelled my account that evening, I simply deleted it from my phone.
There's nothing socially beneficial about anonymous commentary. At best it is self serving drivel. At its worst, well, we see how the media and foreign agents have used it for intentional or unintentional misinformation.
Any kid probably would have predicted the negative effects of Twitter, if it had been described in the abstract to their middle school social studies class.
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Why is "Never Tweet" considered ironic? Sounds like good advice to me.
I've never had a Twitter account and never missed it. In the meantime I continue to watch people having to backtrack from things that they've posted and get themselves into all sorts of trouble. Why? Why don't they learn and just stop?
It also seems like news sources, whether newspapers, TV, radio, magazines or other make it mandatory for their journalists to be on twitter. That should change as well. It seems to me that the quality of reporting has diminished drastically since Twitter became a thing.
6
I have never used or followed Twitter and never will. First of all, I couldn't clear my throat in 140 characters. Second, we are woefully short of aphorists in our culture and aphorism is the only art condensed enough to say anything intelligent in so short a space.
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Bravo, Mr. Manjoo! This is a long-overdue corrective. We can’t of course blame Twitter or any technology for the vile poison that has seeped into our collective bloodstream. But we can certainly dial back on our use of a technology whose radical and enforced brevity encourages fragmented little thought-like objects rather than clear, nuanced thinking.
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Good grief. The kid was just LOOKING at the guy. No violence. None. It didn't even look like enmity on his face. He was SMILING. What is wrong with you if you think he was smirking?!?
The rest of the kids probably don't even know that the tomahawk thing is considered offensive. I certainly didn't when I was that age.
I don't think it's twitter's fault. Twitter doesn't help - that's for sure - but people really need to GET A GRIP.
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@Nadia
Totally agree. It's very scary to think a person can be so judged by a single expression (what if he had been scowling, as I probably would have if someone scruffy - yes, he was - had beaten a drum so close to my face ?)
Or what if the young man was a young woman ? She would not be expected to allow the drummer to intrude on her in such a fashion, and probably would have been praised for having the exact same facial expression, as being one of tolerance and forbearance
(typically considered female traits), if she had 'just stood there'.
The Black Israelites were allowed 'freedom of speech' to spout their ugly, vituperative words through a megaphone. Is facial expression also not considered an aspect of 'freedom of speech' ? Anyone who has studied American or other Sign Languages, even at the beginning level, will instantly confirm that such expression is in fact a part of language (aka speech).
So why were the Black Israelis given a pass while the young man was excoriated simply for what seemed to me to be an attempt to maintain a 'pleasantly neutral' expression ? Was that a politically incorrect application of the concept of 'freedom of speech' ? For those who 'saw smugness', since when is that any kind of crime ?
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There is no excuse for being this uninformed in today’s world.
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Get a clue, @Nadia! He wasn’t just smiling. He was just smirking, and feeling real cute about it.
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Beauty is Truth, and Truth Beauty! Brilliant piece by Mr. Manjoo.
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We have two sensible choices. Go over and shake hands and get to know them. Or walk away. Dueling placards and dueling yelling is the province of people who have too much time on their hands.
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Dear Mr. Manjoo,
I thoroughly enjoyed this article. Parts of it were pretty off-putting (you tweeting at your wedding?!?). But you have elucidated your point exquisitely.
Also, you introduced me to the word "beclown". I will certainly be using it in the future. A delightful verb.
Thank you. :-)
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Congratulations on limiting your Twitter feeds. Now, take the next steps toward adulthood: get off Twitter entirely, and Facebook, and try reading a real newspaper. On real paper. Maybe even a real book!
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@franko A useful aspiration but my first real exposure to the Covington meltdown was the Times story with a headline saying that a group of teens "mobbed" a native Elder. That headline was changed to "Surrounded" before a subsequent correction and follow-up explained that the Native Elder initiated the confrontation.
Twitter is a minor problem. The Times chasing web traffic by rushing to the front of the latest Twitter mob and providing dissemination but neither information nor reflection is a serious problem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/us/covington-catholic-high-school-nathan-phillips.html
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@Tom Maguire: absolutely yes.
Twitter is idiocy and I mostly ignore it. This ONLY BECAME a big deal when the actual news media -- NYT, televise news, cable, etc. -- picked it up and RAN WITH IT before confirming any of it was true.
THAT is a far bigger problem that idiot Tiwtter posts or bloggers.
The fact is that doing this -- jumping the gun on controversial stories -- is now the norm at the NYT and other major news sources and it has dumbed down and harmed JOURNALISM, and journalists who "tweet from their wedding and while their wife is giving birth" are making it all 10,000 times worse.
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I suspect our politics are vastly different, but - yes, yes, yes- I couldn't agree with you more on this. Knee-jerk reaction to the latest outrage, often before facts and reason enter the picture, is rarely the correct mode of operation. It is far better to engage in long-form discussion, rooted in facts, rather than emotional 140 character screeds.
So, you are quite right in your opinion here.
I agree Twitter is harmful, but it doesn't explain why organizations like the Washington Post and several "reputable" media outlets jumped on the bandwagon to report about these "racist" kids without watching the full video which was always available. Journalists not doing their jobs is not Twitter's fault.
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Twitter is media, and that why those of you who work in media are so involved in Twitter and think it's important. Outside of that (and perhaps those in marketing), no one really cares.
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“For years, I tweeted every ingenious and idiotic thought that came into my head, whenever, wherever; I tweeted from my wedding and during my kids’ births, and there was little more pleasing in life than hanging out on Twitter poring over hot news as it broke.”
In real life, no one cares about your running commentary on matters mundane like what you had for breakfast or what you look like after a workout or your real-time thoughts at your own wedding. The audience, if any, for such tedious thoughts was once limited to your family or circle of friends. Social media, however, now reaches an audience of millions and this gives posters the erroneous impression that they are more funny/witty/interesting/talented/profound than they actually are because users have a very low bar for liking or retweeting something…more of a reflex rather than the result much conscious thought.
The other major problem with Twitter is that everyone wants to be first to break or comment on “hot news” and this desire overrides any instinct one has to first verify the facts about such underlying news. Gossip, fake news and outrage spread faster than a California wildfire on social media because social media sees truth as an inconvenient obstacle to the race to get the most likes, retweets, etc. For this reason, everyone, not just journalists, should get off Twitter (and Facebook, Instagram and their ilk) as it serves no purpose except to provide a platform for people’s narcissism.
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Between this incident with the Covington students on one side, Trump's often bombastic pronouncements on the other, is it safe to call those who indulge in the excesses of what Twitter can wreak havoc on a bunch of twits?
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You should say what really happened. The mainstream media tried to destroy the lives of high schoolers based on the account of a liar. Mr. Phillips blatantly lied about every detail of the incident. And the media ran with it without any investigation. And then the media doubled down on the lies when the children were exonerated.
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@Jake If "the media" doubled down, why is the Times allowing a plethora of stories and self-examination that question how it handled this?
Agreed.
Let's start by ignoring Trump's tweets.
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The mainstream media gave to Twitter most of the power that it has. Even today, most people don't read tweets on Twitter. They read them because journalists publish tweets.
It's always been lazy and an abdication of responsibility to present news in context. It encourages debate by one-liner without follow-up, and it rewards blowhards and liars.
Journalists haven't shown in any way that this really bothers them enough to stop.
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I quit FB and Twit on 11/9/16 (a day after my 61st birthday and the you-know-what!). I used it mainly as a device to promote my work as a Diversity and Inclusion expert, trainer and advocate. I found myself being trolled many times and once I left, that all mercifully stopped. It may have hurt my overall business, but I DON'T MISS IT AT ALL!! I think the writer encapsulates the essence of social media in his comment; "to self-servingly promote my articles". It is this "self-serving" that is killing us.
2
I would think journalists would like to preserve some sense of neutral attitude towards the topics they cover. That way, they have the credibility to call it like they see it.
Unfortunately, a lot of good journalists and journalism is seen as more partisan than it is because the journalist shares heated personal political opinions for the world to see.
Many great journalists are doing great work, for example, uncovering Trump administration corruption. However, when those journalists also tweet about "Orange Hitler" or culture war issues, it becomes all too easy for others to discount their actual good journalism.
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@Scott That is so true! I have a friend who's a reporter here for Der Spiegel, and when I read his partisan invective, even if I agree with a lot of it, I'm appalled — especially since his magazine is in such trouble for its much-vaunted fact-checkers and editors allowing several fake stories because they painted a fantasy portrait of a twisted America full of crazies.
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Thinking, intelligent people from any profession should "disengage from twitter". Leave it to the self-absorbed people with low self esteem like trump.
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Great advice! The talking heads on the right want to conflate social media with news organizations, and they want to conflate news organizations with Democratic policy and strategy. Then the only party in our two party system that is interested in governing responsibly is saddled with defending some overreaction of the twitterverse. Journalists should do their best to define themselves as independent from political parties and from twitter mobs. Don't engage with the idiocy...
1
Outrage because a teenager was smiling, possibly condescendingly, possibly not, at an old man?
Save your outrage for something outrageous.
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Best start your cutbacks with your employer. We are advised to contact the opinion writers on twitter. Will not and do not
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@Mary Travers
I agree with you.
I've been of the opinion that authoritative news sources should get off social media, and prohibit their content being presented natively on these platforms. Links back to the source fine, but actually reading a NYT article on Facebook, no.
If authoritative sources aren't on these platforms, the opportunity to conflate fake news sources with real news surely diminishes. Make it so that, anyone who proclaims having got their news on social media can be laughed out of town.
Twitter is disgusting. Most tweets are 99% self-serving blurts - unless one considers wholesale hatred as a public service. Twitter debases our most sacred gift: speech.
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Sigh. Another white man "both sides-ing" it. Think of the children!
Good journalists can be on Twitter and still question things properly. Should they fight with people with dissenting opinions? NO! (I'm looking at you, Maggie H.)
Amen, Farhad! Why makes these "firestorms" of ignorant people on Twitter newsworthy? And aren't a lot of the firestorms really more on the scales of marshmallow roasts?
It's encouraging that more and more people are recognizing the destructive power of social media, especially Twitter.
There will always be a segment of the population that will refuse to give up twitter, primarily the uneducated and the hopeless narcissists. But if enough smart and powerful people refuse to use it it's influence and damage will eventually recede to the fringes of society where it belongs.
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I understand the confusion and consternation, but many of the kids were wearing MAGA hats. Hard to argue over the impression that makes. Plus the school allowed it. The he said/did v she said/did is interesting and makes for great argument, but whether that young man was completely innocent and not participating in any of the weirdness that was going on, he had on his head a symbol of what's going on in this country.
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@JLSoCal
"...many of the kids were wearing MAGA hats ..." How many exactly? And how many weren't?
"Plus the school allowed it." - I always understood that the US Constitution allowed it (and not to wear it).
Who, anywhere, is "completely innocent"? - and who, anywhere, gets to decide that?
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@Erasmus Yes, freedom of speech is certainly constiutional. However -- these kids were on a school field trip and were representing a private religious school; in the US, such schools get tax exemptions that are worth a considerable amount of money. For that reason, nonprofits and religious organizations are not allowed to make explicitly political statements and air their political views. The chaperones of these boys, however, allowed -- and apparently encouraged -- them to do just that. As a backstory: some years ago the feds threatened to revoke a church's nonprofit status in California because it issued too many political (that is, liberal) statements. Me? I don't care if the boys get MAGA tatoos. They just shouldn't sport them in the context of belonging to, representing, and attending a tax-exempt organization.
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@Awestruck
Well likely everybody has issues with the tax code.
But it seems that you believe it is a bad thing that the chaperones of these boys "allowed and apparently encouraged" them to exercise their constitutional rights both to wear and not wear hats (and most did not wear hats).
I, by contrast, would have greater issues with a tax payer funded institution that directed its members/students/employees all to perform one way or the other.
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The only way to stop this insta-journalism would be to remove money from the equation. Which would mean turning into a society that only has public-funded media without any competition for clicks and eyeballs.
As long as the news organization that gets the headline first makes the most money, we're going to have more tabloid news incidents like the Covington Catholic school.
For the record, after looking at lots of video, I still see a bunch of teens who were running around hooting like they were in a football stadium instead of on a classroom field trip. They seemed to think they were at a Trump rally and apparently their chaperons thought so, too.
They yelled MAGA and Build the Wall at some women. Yelled more at the black preachers who were yelling fire and brimstone and then insults from their table. And then hooted and hollered at the Native American group. Apparently, they were yelling and jumping around for nearly an hour before Phillips approached them.
I'm not sure why loud roughhousing and bellowing is supposed to be so virtuous. If a group of young women from a Catholic girls' school were running around on a field trip, shouting and jumping about, I bet the chaperons would have been quick to say, "Behave yourselves! You're in public and you represent your school. Act like a lady!" Which just goes to show the level of privilege enjoyed by young white men. They can run around screaming and tearing off their clothes and, oh, well, boys will be boys.
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@Heather Yes. The chaperones might have said that. Then there would be those of us on the left that would have said, "Why can't they be like boys?"
Completely agree with the sentiment expressed here. However, the compulsions that result in tweeting nonsense now also bleeds into journalism generally. This is a bigger problem. Serious journalists need to do whatever is necessary to maintain civility, reality, and to rely only on objectively truthful facts in whatever is reported about anything and everything. This is because it seems as though nearly everything uttered now on cable news and in print media is based on nothing but rank speculation and often quadruple hearsay, all of which is inherently unreliable. The Twitter-like compulsion to be first now outweighs asking whether it's accurate and honest. The media need to get a collective grip on their profession to begin restoring credibility in the news.
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Well said, Mr. Manjoo. Twitter and Facebook are dangerous. They monetize our personal information through targeted advertising and make more money the more they can prove to their advertisers that they have our eyeballs glued to their websites. How do they get us to do that? By using the intoxicating power of anger and outrage. Outrage is a poison--and a highly addictive one at that. This Covington fiasco is the tech world's dream. It's a highly divisive scenario in which an edited version of the available video content showed one group of people operating in their political bubble what they wanted to see. Then another video showed another group of people operating in their political bubble what they wanted to see. Twitter and Facebook Wars Commence! Retweet this (58 year old) celebrity's righteous indignation against that smug teenager! Repost this article from Fox News condemning the media! All the while Twitter and Facebook cash in as we get high on our moral high ground and judgment, reinforced by "likes" from people in our political safe spaces, about a situation that none of us witnessed or experienced. #stop
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@John
Thank you for identifying what lies beneath the social media experience -- monetized 'addictive outrage'.
I remember my mother, not even a decade ago, asking me "What is Twitter"? At the time, I was only vaguely aware of its fledgling existence. Who would have guessed that it would feed insatiably and become
some sort of ravenous latter-day Tyranosaurus Rex ?
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I'm still waiting for the final report as to what actually happened.
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Amen. Thank you for this. Your advice is just as valuable for non-journalists. I hope that everyone will take it to heart.
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I've always maintained that only Twits use Twitter, evidence Donald Trump.
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Quitting Twitter is not the answer. Journalists, readers and everyone in general must never forget NOTHING IS EVER AS IT SEEMS. Always question and always strive to see the big picture. There is little in life you can take at face value. So Tweet, but Tweet thoughtfully.
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@Amy Sadly, I think your: Tweet, but believe nothing adds to the problem and drowns out your better argument.
Knowing what good journalism is when you see it, and realizing that Twitter has a very limited and potentially dangerous role in journalism is much more important.
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@Amy
He didn't say quit Twitter.
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OMG! I just had the BEST idea! How about twitter changes so that all tweets need to be in haiku? Think about it. It would definitely work. And spark some creativity, at least.
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@Nadia
I live in a liberal democracy where OMG is the name of a restaurant which not too long ago was a Catholic church which no longer has enough bottoms to occupy its pews.
We no longer countenance religion in our public sphere and we are still debating outlawing open displays of religion in our public spaces.
Twitter is all that is left for too many of us as a medium of communication. Marshall Mcluhan told us the Medium is the Message and for me 1500 characters is hardly adequate for a preamble.
At 70 I wonder whether I will learn to twitter before or after I am senile.
1
I would be delighted if I never again had the media telling me what so-and-so (or their publicist) tweeted about whatever. If I wanted to know I would follow these people on Twitter.
That includes our President. If his tweets weren’t reported he might have to find a mature way to communicate.
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No, twitter is fine if you vet out the accounts you follow. I have a list of about 10 notable journalists, and for 10 minutes each day, I check the list to see what they've been saying and noticing about the world.
Journalists and writers use twitter to share their thinking process, and so you wouldn't subject it to the same standards as a news piece. Of course, with stories like the Covington rally, it was on Twitter before reporters had time to hear all sides. Probably subject to misinterpretation, but the same is true for TV media which may sometimes magnify details which turn out to be unimportant... I like consulting with my twitter list when I need to feel the pulse of intelligent people during an evolving story -- paying more attention to the development of a narrative rather than the content of any individual tweet.
@NotKafka The problem is that a thinking process is not a finished product and Twitter user have been dredging up any content that is not acceptable to them. There is no grace in this Twitter space, yet we are a species in dire need of grace.
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I got off Facebook and Twitter two years ago and haven’t missed them one bit. I get my news from newspapers I trust online, and not from what people on FB and Twitter heard and “know to be true.” I especially don’t miss the social media venom. I know there are good things about FB and Twitter, if they’re used properly, but that’s not always the case.
My social media ignorance is bliss.
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@Rich S. , same here (although I only used Facebook). The fact that it was so difficult for me to get off and finally delete my account made it even more clear how necessary it was to do it, as did the outrage and consternation and predictions that I'd be back when I posted that I was quitting.
Has anyone who has quit drinking alcohol ever noticed how perturbed, and even sometimes angry, others get when you say you don't drink any more? The similarities were frightening.
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@Rich S. Same here and it has had a very positive effect on my self-image and also my view of the world.
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@Rich S. - I was (repeat - was) a Facebook user for several years. It was only when I realized FB usage was a compulsive behavior that I deleted the account.
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OK, but to be fair...This is NOT a Twitter issue.
Think of photographs in other news sources that captured part of a picture, drew conclusions and went to press. One struck me--
I can't, for the life of me, remember the whole story. There was a demonstration. Someone who was carrying a flag fell, apparently without a meaningful cause (it was a shoelace or a curbside, something benign ). As the person was going down, someone else grabbed the flag. The picture used by the media was the one frame of the incident which looked like person A was wresting the flag away from Person B. The story suggested violence had occurred. The subjects were of two different races. (I can't remember which ethnicity fell and which one caught the flag). It was an unintentional media miscommunication--but I remember the story because it was not cleared for years after the event. I'm sure we can all remember instances where context was lost by misinterpretation or a bad choice in cropping a photo.
Same thing happens when words are 'twisted'just by taking them out of context. Mr. Trump is a master at that skill, but lots of media--and regular people--are guilty of it as well.
Twitter is a waste of time, IMHO, because there is no room for nuance. The brevity overstates the value f the content.
The lesson is far larger than silly 'ol Twitter. It is the habit we all have of rushing to judgment.
6
I have no Twitter account. Twitter reporting does not come with the credibility of established news outlet. Thus I do not care about the tweets.
The more it is important that the established news outlets (as the NYT) do never amplify a tweet. A tweet at best should be considered a source for a journalist; like on a tip he/she then can follow that lead and portray the real facts.
It takes time. The sensation may be passed by the time the research is complete. As in the Covington story; there is nothing newsworthy about it. Such events happen dozens of times in the US, day by day. Most just do not have the luxury of a viral video. Knowing about it is neither informative nor interesting.
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@Jzu The only place I ever see tweets is in my digital subscription to the NYT. I think that qualifies as amplification.
2
Dump Twitter, BuzzFeed, Politico, Splinter, Huff Post, Vox - any of the myriad sites which depend upon algorithms to get you to their space. They are not doing journalism, but something that pretends to do journalism, and that algorithm ensures that you only see and hear what you are inclined to agree with.
Forget CNN (oh how far that once-decent middlebrow network has fallen since 2016!). Forget MSNBC and Fox, open mics for Democratic and Republican parties respectively.
Instead, watch PBS NewsHour and other PBS news programs, and documentary series like "Frontline."
To know what's really happening in the world in a sane, thoughtful basis, what PBS NewsHour, which seems to exist in an alternate universe.
And in a way it does. Since it doesn't need to worry about money, it doesn't need to draw eyes to the network with screaming talking heads. Because it's not on 24/7, they don't have to recount the same news hour upon the hour, and inflame each new "development" as "Breaking News!"
It's kind of boring, in a good way.
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@Livonian
Yes please! And C-SPAN! We're constantly consuming filtered material. Get back to the primary sources as much as possible and let yourself think. Politics are inherently emotional, I refuse to let them rile me up further for ratings.
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@Livonian www.democracynow.org is an excellent source of long form news. Told objectively, not disguising the interest, often marked liberal, or the little guy, the protestor, the disenfranchised. 1 hour, 5 days per week, no commercials. No algorithms.
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@Livonian
That's not necessary.
Watch and listen to and read anything you want - in fact, as much as you can. Because that is how to learn the various facets and biases that are being spread by legitimate and fake news. What matters is what's between your ears.
The problem in America is not twitter, CNN, or Fox. The problem is the intelligence of the average American - and the fact that they have the right to vote. That is why the more "news" the better - the more exposure the better - the more view points the better.
Public education should be the way to get America back on track but I'm afraid no one teaches "how to learn about current events in our government." Moreover, private/parochial education is responsible for the lack of open-minded adults that are necessary to our democracy.
56
Yes!! I understand journalists want to break a story and react before other news organizations; that's what gets eyeballs and clicks, which in turn drives profit. But journalists are as susceptible as everyone else to writing thoughtless tweets without enough consideration or facts. Twitter is a throwaway medium with lasting ramifications, and serious journalists should simply delete their accounts. As Mr. Manjoo said, Twitter does nothing to further knowledge or debate; rather, it skews journalism and hurts the image of the news media generally. It is also impossible to convey complicated stories in a few hundred characters.
If only we could convince President Trump that governing via Twitter is terrible for the same reasons. But, in a way, it's a perfect medium for him: shallow, from the gut and favoring raw emotion over thoughtful reflection, and a transitory, quick medium where he can boil down complicated problems into simple, incendiary slogans and easy-to-remember phrases.
9
Tis' a sad day that the language of Shakespeare has devolved into a 140 character meme filled character assassination, however the simple fix is not just to take the high road, but to bring along as many as possible.
You give breath to hatred, misogyny, racism, and whole host of other ills of society by giving it a platform.
One only need look at the President and how he leads the press around by the nose each and every news cycle. (or after each and every tweet) Why is that ?
The press and we, give the dividers a platform every time we acknowledge, repeat over and over, and then ultimately try to respond in kind on their level.
The digital realm is not real - simply ignore .
39
Everyone, just about, should disengage from Twitter. More harm than good seems to have come from it for individuals who have destroyed their careers with it throught out tweets to the country as a whole, which is being cleaved apart by hateful tweets.
23
The social media/tech revolution has precipitated a race to the bottom.
Journalists are now judged on clicks rather than quality.
27
Hey, reporters: telling me what's happening on twitter is not journalism. If I wanted to see what's happening on a website run by a private company, I would look at that website.
Why do all soul-searching twitter/facebook articles find it necessary to concede that we somehow need facebook and twitter?
77
WAIT = Why Am I Talking. I think we all need to practice a bit more of this.
49
Tis' a sad day that the language of Shakespeare has devolved into a 140 character meme filled character assassination, however the simple fix is not just to take the high road, but to bring along as many as possible.
You give breath to hatred, misogyny, racism, and whole host of other ills of society by giving it a platform.
One only need look at the President and how he leads the press around by the nose each and every news cycle. (or after each and every tweet) Why is that ?
The press and we, give the dividers a platform every time we acknowledge, repeat over and over, and then ultimately try to respond in kind on their level.
The digital realm is not real - simply ignore.
2
Journalists trying to keep their role in society (and livelihood) alive should not carry the burden of choosing not to post to networks where people tune into for infotainment.
I will recommend a better approach: I paid for a New York Times subscription, WSJ subscription, and a local subscription to San Jose Mercury News. Ask your readers to do the same and encourage them to tell their friends!
24
Even better than never tweet, ban -as a monopolistic practice- the worthless and addictive menace of "social media" that is disrupting real social relations, eating into economic productivity, eliminating stable and societally beneficial jobs, eroding intellectual vibrancy, shredding attention spans, rotting the minds of younger generations, corroding education, polluting politics, and helping elect the worst leaders in US history.
22
AMEN Mr Manjoo!
In 2010, when Twitter was just a few years old and the media was still trying to figure out how to incorporate it, I happened to attend a journalism conference. One reporter for a large newspaper boasted how she was tweeting regularly and connecting with readers in a new way, and I posed a question...
Ok, so you're connecting with readers. But are you connecting with them in a way that upholds the basic tenets of journalism? Are you serving the public by analyzing complicated issues and providing in-depth reporting, or are you actually doing the opposite and feeding already short attention spans with small blips of "shallow" news?
I suggested that tweeting by journalists was akin to a bad game of telephone, where they were passing along information that wasn't necessarily verified or even true. The reporter replied that she was simply "going where the readers are congregating," and this is the future of journalism and we better get used to it.
She was right, of course. But I think so was I.
97
"Beclown" Thank you for the laugh, and my new favorite word. It should come in handy.
13
This is quite possibly the most intelligent article written in recent memory. :)
7
For once I agree with Mr. Manjoo. But it's nothing new that laziness is driving journalism. All you have to do is remember the slavish showing up at photo-ops, stump speeches, perp walks and other manufactured events. Once the powers realized that they didn't have to flee journalists, just supply them with distracting theater, it became much easier to advance their agendas without anybody noticing.
The scary part is how the bean counters will see Twitterism as the new journalism and will lay off the real investigators - if they have any.
11
Question ?. How often does tsar Putin tweet ? Or does he just sit back and enjoy the fray.
12
Twitter isn't just ruining journalism. It's ruining our entire civil society. Most adults are aware (or ought to be aware)
that the rest of the world is not interested in hearing every unfiltered thought that comes into our heads. And with good reason - most of our unfiltered thoughts are pretty poorly considered, not founded on anything except our unconscious biases, and reflective of nothing except our ids. Twitter is an open sewer of moronic self-indulgence, exhibitionism, and ego gratification. Its the equivalent of sitting down in the most disgusting bar in town at 3:30 in the morning, after all of the people with actual lives to lead have gone home and there is no one left to talk to except the ones who can't bear to be left alone with their own thoughts - which they feel free to share with anyone and everyone dumb enough to still be there. Every last one of us should get off Twitter now and forever and never tweet again. It is nothing short of a plague on all humanity. We need filters and social rules of engagement to maintain a public sphere and civil society.
182
My wife does not use Twitter, and knows nothing about it. She would be completely immune from Twitter's toxic effects if it weren't for the amplification of the worst of Twitter in the media. I'm sure the same can be said of most people, so I believe if more journalists took Mr. Manjoo's approach, the toxic effects of Twitter could be lessened greatly.
15
@Ross
"Twitter is an open sewer of moronic self-indulgence, exhibitionism, and ego gratification."
Brilliantly explained.
3
That Twitter is no more than a cesspool was evident ten years ago and more, already. Easy words are empty.
12
It saddens and disconcerts me that (some) journalists are just now realizing this.
28
Twitter got us Trump. 'Nuff said.
8
“The fine is more than the fee!”—that was how a friend of mine explained what he couldn’t understand about the justice system, but it applies more broadly. We punish people more for what they haven’t done than for what they could’ve done.
Doesn’t make sense to me either.
No adult should tweet. And certainly no journalist should go to Twitter for material for their reporting. And very certainly no newspaper or magazine (whether paper or online) should report on the social media response to any happening. Yes, this is the world that Don Trump came from and helped create. But tens of thousands of other people also helped create it. We need some adults with some self-restraint to abandon Twitter and do some real, old-time reporting. The type that takes some time and thinking to do.
52
@Gordon Wiggerhaus I tried twitter once. I didn't understand how it was interesting. It was really just a pain to have to check. You are spot on about news agencies not using ANY "social" media. It's mostly not social and has zero news value.
6
I've yet to hear a cogent argument in favor of Twitter. The best argument I can think of is that Twitter is really good at disseminating real-time information in the time of an emergency. (The second best is that it is a fantastic platform for one-lining stand-up comedians.) However, if that is its only social utility (emergencies, not comedians) than shouldn't we just use it for that? Twitter isn't just ruining American journalism, it is ruining America. It is time we ended the social experiment where we are allowed to tell other people things that we wouldn't otherwise tell them if we face to face.
39
I have never been on Twitter, and I am amazed at how depressed and angry my friends who are addicted to it have become.
193
What worries me most about the Covington Catholic story (after the death threats of course) is the rush by main stream media to circulate the initial video and write over and over about that wrongly interpreted video all the while reinforcing the incorrect interpretation.
Twitter is Twitter, use it at your own risk. I expect much more out of my main stream news sources. In general, they are magnificent but this is one time I feel totally let down.
10
Thank you for identifying the pleasure and the dangers of Twitter. And thank you for being honest.
5
As a writer I like explanations and have always disliked Twitter for that reason. Pithy statements do not make for news or any real communication.
115
That's the biggest drawback for me. I'm no professional, but most tweets I attempt require more time to consolidate than anything.
3
I have often said to people that the reason I do not use twitter is that you can't make a coherent argument, supported by evidence, with only 140 characters. I find that, when talking with younger people, they are more likely to expect short fast answers. Too many people do not understand that facts are not always clear and the truth is often not a binary choice between two options in front of you.
8
@Delia
Could you elaborate a little more Delia?
1
Until Trump was elected, I considered any news article that mentioned or quoted a tweet to be lazy journalism- the equivalent of reporting doodles or graffiti. However, when the President of the United States uses Twitter to communicate substantive policy, I reluctantly concede an exception must be made in his case. But that's confine it to that, o.k.? Reporting what people "tweet" simply aggravates partisan rancor, providing heat without light.
17
One of the greatest benefits of using Twitter is how fairly quickly and diligently plenty of people will dissect a video or post. We may often lose the professional journalistic standards in favor of seeming more connected to writers and the people and events on which they report. As long as there are other sources, legitimate fact checkers, and most importantly the ability for every user to respond. I agree with Cathy's sentiment.
1