The Twitter career graveyard has begun slowly filling up. News today that CNN’s senior editor for middle east affairs has been sacked after 20 years with the company for voicing what was deemed to be an inappropriate sentiment via Twitter. Octavia Nasr publicly mourned the death of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.
Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.
Parisa Khosravi, CNN’s vice-president international newsgathering, said in a statement that Nasr’s credibility had been compromised.
Back in May, comedian and columnist for Australian newspaper the Age Catherine Deveny lost her slot on the paper following tweets she sent during the Logies awards ceremony.
Deveny defended herself, claiming that Twitter was like “passing notes in class, but suddenly these notes are being projected into the sky and taken out of context. Twitter is online graffiti, not a news source.”
“Wrong,” said the Age technology editor, “posts to Twitter are not private messages”.
Labour candidate Stuart MacLennan lost his job during this year’s general election campaign after what the Times called a “spectacular ‘Twitter suicide'”. MacLennan reportedly called the elderly “coffin dodgers,” before moving on to some more colourful language:
He had also labelled the Commons Speaker John Bercow a “t**”, David Cameron a “t***” and Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, “a b******”.