Media criticism

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In my search to find an article where media is critical of self I found a story about a Washington Post reporter who was fired for tweeting a false story. In light of the scandal and allegations against Ben Roethlisberger last year he was suspended from the Steeler's first 6 games of the season. A few weeks ago a Washington Post reporter, Mike Wise, tweeted that Roethlisberger would only be suspended for 5 games and the news spread very quickly. What I found most interesting was that Wise's defense for his tweet was that he falsely tweeted on purpose, and he did so to show how easy it is to make false claims on twitter and that twitter is not a credible new source. Based on the fact that on his twitter he says he is a writer for the Washington Post, the newspaper found grounds to dismiss him because in referencing his position as a reporter it made his twitter somewhat more reliable than the average user.

The criticism the author of the article offered was that while Wise had a good idea to expose the falsity of twitter, there was a better way he could have done it with out jeopardizing his job.While Wise was out to show how people blindly believe tweets and never check sources, I do not think he realized how quickly (and sadly) twitter has become a major source of information. Also, the author was critical of twitter in that agreed with Wise's motive to show people that twitter is not a news source or a credible source of information. Unless you want to know what Ashton Kutcher ate for dinner, don't look up important things on twitter. Or at the least, double check what you read on twitter before freaking out about it.

I wish this story was more widely known because way too many people believe things they read on twitter without taking 2 minutes to Google what they read and check the source. I personally think twitter is ridiculous and think this story proves that only complete idiots rely on twitter as a credible news source.
C'mon... really? It's effing twitter.