When Twitter goes bad: newspaper tweets a funeral
US newspaper The Rocky Mountain News has come under scrutiny for its use of microblogging tool Twitter.
The paper has been using the service to provide news alerts with its @The Rocky account, but recently experimented with an individual reporter twittering from the funeral of a 3-year-old.
“Rocky reporter Berny Morson filed live updates from the memorial service of 3-year-old Marten Kudlis. The messages are unedited,” reads the editor’s note accompanying the article on the death of Marten Kudlis, who was killed in a car crash last week.
Michael Roberts at the Latest Word blog points out that the updates are ‘self-satirizing in the most morbid, inappropriate way possible’.
“Morson’s not to blame for the lameness of these entries, which suggest a golfing commentator whispering at green-side while Tiger Woods lines up a putt.”
Questions have been raised about the appropriateness of Twitter coverage before, but usually centring on its suitability as a medium for coverage e.g. does the event require frequent updates or can it wait? Covering a funeral – that’s proprierty gone AWOL.
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September 11th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Christ, what do they *think* happens at a funeral? Coffins and earthen graves are pretty par for the course in most religions. Not a good use of the technology – live *video*, however… now *that* would let one indulge one’s mawkish death fetish.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:58 am
I remember reporting on one particular funeral after a tragic accident in Australia and feeling horribly uncomfortable by my instrusion – especially when I saw the journalist next to me idly doodling in her pad. This insenstive Tweeting really highlights how disconnected the journalist can be from an event like this. Is there a need for journalists at a funeral? Does the public gain from funeral reportage?
September 12th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
[...] There is a school of thought that would say it is in poor taste for a journalist to live-twitter a t… [...]
September 12th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
[...] move are the reporters who take their advice. Berny Morson from Denver’s Rocky Mountain News dragged the gravesite into the 21st century Wednesday by sending updates from the funeral of a three-year-old boy killed in a car crash that [...]
September 13th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
[...] When Twitter goes bad: newspaper tweets a funeral [...]
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 am
[...] The Rocky Mountain News twittered from a funeral When Twitter goes bad: newspaper tweets a funeral [...]
January 18th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
[...] controversial use of twitter involved the US newspaper, The Rocky Mountain News who used the tool to update its website news alerts. The reporter attended a funeral of a three year [...]
March 26th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
[...] Jemima conceeded that Twitter’s not the best platform for all stories. Definitely not the tweeting of a three-year-old’s funeral, as the recently folded Rocky Mountain News [...]