Wow. What a busy afternoon.
Gordon Lightfoot is dead and resurrected — and I am alternately pilloried and cursed for being involved in his fall and rise.
But this post is about Twitter — a microblogging network where you can tell your tale at just 140 characters a time — and how it is at the heart of this whole thing.
First here's the events as they unfolded this afternoon.
I work in the national newsroom of Canwest News Service, a wire service which has clients across North America. We're similar in some ways and different in others to Canadian Press, Reuters, and so on. For Canwest, I report on federal politics. But our newsroom in Ottawa has more than just politics reporters: It is the hub for our national operation with a national sports desk, our national entertainment desk; our national business desk and so on.
Like any wire service, the editors on those desks will move what are known as “ALERTS” to let its clients know that some big breaking news event has just happened and a story is coming. ALERTS are not “Stories we're working on” or “stories we think might happen” but are, in fact, short bursts of fact. Newsrooms in any part of the world that get an “ALERT” usually start clearing space in the papers or newscasts for the story to come.
Here's some ALERTS that Canwest has sent out recently
- ALERT – A Canadian soldier was killed Friday in Afghanistan.
- ALERT – Disgraced Montreal financier Earl Jones has been handed an 11-year prison sentence after pleading guilty last month to two charges of defrauding investors of $50.3 million.
- ALERT – Ontario police have arrested a male for the disappearance and death of Jessica Lloyd. Her family reported her missing on Jan. 29, after she didn’t show up for work.
And here's an ALERT that moved on our wire earlier today:
- ALERT – Ontario-born singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot has died, according to sources close to the singer.
Some short stories began appearing on the Web sites of Canwest papers, shortly after that.
Within a few minutes, our service moved another ALERT that cast doubt on what “sources close to the singer” had told a Canwest reporter (not me, some other reporter in our system) and that Lightfoot was still alive.
New stories appeared on our wire correcting that and, eventually, a story will appear explaining how all this happened.
Meanwhile on Twitter …
I have about 2,500 people that “follow” me on Twitter. Many are journalists in other newsrooms. I follow journalists myself from other organizations and we all often 'tweet' new facts, stories, etc. that we're reporting on and we figure our followers are interested in reading about.
So when the ALERT about Gordon Lightfoot's death crossed our wire, I figured my followers would be interested in this and so I sent out a tweet that looked like this:
Gordon Lightfoot has died, sources close to the singer say.
I did this because I have and continue to have absolute confidence in the 3,000 or so journalists who are my Canwest colleagues that they get stuff like this right. I've tweeted out their ALERTS before and I'm sure I will again. And, of course, on a practical level, I simply can't go around confirming for myself that “a Canadian soldier was killed in Afghanistan” or that “Ontario police have arrested a male…”. I have to trust my colleagues.
Lots of folks began “Re-tweeting” what I had just tweeted about Lightfoot. And those people re-tweeted and so on and so on. Ian Capstick calculates that within a few minutes of the first reports of his death, there were 1,400 Tweets about it. Many of those tweets, I suspect, had my Twitter name — @davidakin — on them. Lots of people – even other political journalists in Ottawa who know what I generally report on — assumed, with some good reason, that it was me, David Akin, who had personally spoke to these sources close to Lightfoot and that I was reporting his death for the first time right here. That was in incorrect assumption but it's one that, in hindsight, is an easy one to get wrong.
As our wire service began moving new ALERTS and other information I, tweeted that out immediately as well:
- A famous Cdn musician – a Lightfoot contemporary – said Lightfoot died. Now Lightfoot mgr says that's not true. Hope Mngment is right!
- Ah-Source for “Lightfoot Is Dead” story: None other than Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins to a B.C. reporter. Lightfoot alive! Lightfoot alive!
So — and here's where lesson one may have been learned today — perhaps what I should have done was write my Tweet in this fashion:
- Canwest reports: Gordon Lightfoot has died, sources close to the singer say
- Canwest reports: Ronnie Hawkins said Lightfoot died; manager says he's alive.
Normally on Twitter, when you want to attribute what you're saying, you'd provide a link — to a news story, to a blog etc. In doing so, you essentially are saying, “This is what I heard. Don't know if it's right, but here's a link if you want to check out its accuracy. I just thought you'd like to know.”
My Tweet had neither a link — the Canwest Alert was out before the stories hit the Web — nor any other attribution and so many assumed this was me doing the actual reporting. It was an incorrect assumption to make but you can see how one could make that assumption. (I've tweeted more than 7,000 times and many of those had those kind of links so I may have assumed that my followers would simply know that I don't normally cover entertainment news.)
Twitter is still kind of a new new thing for journalists and for readers. Personally, I think it's a great new thing. I find new sources; I hear from readers; I'm a better journalist for having dived in. Still, there's lots that journalists and readers need to learn and understand when it comes to some of the things we take for granted when we see a story in our paper-copy newspaper: Who wrote this story? Who pays their bills? Are they reliable? What's the protocol for passing along information found on Twitter?
I'm up for exploring and figuring out all of these things. If you've got some thoughts, please jump in in the comments section.
Oh, and as as a former reporter for Lightfoot's hometown paper, the Orillia Packet and Times, let me offer my apologies! Good luck with the tour and we'll see you in the nation's capital!
Ronnie Hawkins wanted Gordon Lightfoot dead?
So, was the real Hawk the source for the ALERT? I.e. hoax-by-celeb, hoax by imposter or mistake?
I didn't mean to post anon; @dennisjordan
Who at Canwest Global got this story wrong in the first place? Is there no basic fact-checking that occurs prior to an alert being sent or a wire story being posted? Shouldn't someone have picked up the phone and called a reputable source (ie. management, agent, artist himself) to determine the story's veracity first?
And how can anyone be expected to trust what comes out of the Canwest Global news service if this basic, journalism 101 task is NOT being carried out? A mea culpa after the fact does not negate shoddy journalism.
@coriferguson
I didn't know that Ronnie Hawkins was still alive
I followed this as it unfolded on Twitter and found it very disturbing, from a journalistic point of view. Was the original Canwest story based on a single source? If so, that's a big problem. You don't publish or air a story based on a single source, especially someone's death. And those who used David's Tweet as a source are equally guilty. This raises questions about the current standards in our country's newsrooms.
As for the Twitter angle, I wouldn't go as far as to say Twitter is contributing to lower journalistic standards, but in this case, it certainly didn't help. Although as some have pointed out, Twitter posters were quick to correct the error.
Twitter promotes citizen journalism, which is great in theory, but we still need professional, paid reporters, even if they get it wrong once in a while!
Doug Watt
David, Hawkins' cousin Dale Hawkins died just this week. As I recall the original “Lightfoot dead” stories, and the Hawkins' quote, he said something like “People have been calling us”. That made no sense. Why would people call Ronnie Hawkins about Lightfoot's death? It almost seems as if someone contacted Hawkins about his cousin, then wrote Gordon Lightfoot, or somebody else changed it along the way. If it wasn't intentional, it was some blunder! Hope somebody gets to the bottom of it.
I got the news from the Victoria Times Colonist via twitter. They has still not tweeted a correction, though they have something on their website.
Still I think they should have sent out a tweet apologizing for their error.
Update: Hawkins says it was a prank played on him.
This explains how it went down; Hawk was pranked by a sicko: http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Twitter+rumours+Gordon+Lightfoot+death+greatly+exaggerated+updated/2582402/story.html
@dennisjordan
Well, it's interesting that you gave the timeline of events, but you're blaming your Twitter followers for making “incorrect assumptions” that you were reporting the story? You're a journalist, you're on Twitter and you send a Tweet about someone dying! Gee, I'd say you reported it. Not exactly rocket science.
Your backpedalling excuse for an article doesn't justify nor take responsibility for you and Canwest erroneously reporting someone's death without CHECKING THE FACTS.
By the way, this little warning comes up when I go to post a comment on your website: “Please review your comment for accuracy.” Ha!! Perhaps Canwest 'journalists' might heed the same advice.
This was a distressing incident for me. I was one of the early retweeters of your original tweet. At 2:24 pm I added “Tragic news” and retweeted your tweet.
Then, I made a quick tribute post on my own blog with a couple of YouTube videos of Lightfoot. I am not ashamed to say that tears were streaming down my face as I listened and typed my tribute to a fine man.
At 2:36, I tweeted again: “RIP Gordon Lightfoot 1938-2010. We've lost a truly great Canadian. http://ow.ly/18NwF” The link was to a now, deleted Canwest page.
My tweet, like yours, was retweeted numerous times. Almost immediately, there were replies saying my link led to a non-existent story. I was hoping that there was some mistake but I found a more detailed death notice in the Calgary Herald.
I took a screen shot of that page. Here it is:
http://ow.ly/i/wMO
Upon learning that Lightfoot was indeed not dead, I dried my tears and I deleted my original blog post. I replaced it with a message that Lightfoot is alive and posted the screen shot of the Calgary Herald story.
I was chastised by some of my blog readers and Twitter followers for rumour mongering. I felt almost ghoulish.
I now feel like a complete fool. You lost credibility. Canwest lost credibility. And, I lost credibility among my own followers. I even phoned a friend who is a professional editorial cartoonist and as a result, he had begun working on a tribute drawing to send out to his list of 100+ editors. I was able to call him back before he embarrassed himself, too.
I'm sure there's some lesson to be learned from this unfortunate episode but I'm still trying to decide just what it is. Neither your blog post nor the above comments have really told me what lesson I should take from this.
Tomorrow morning, I'll strap on the squeezebox and play a few Gordy tunes.
Good night.
ALERT – Ontario-born singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot has died, according to sources close to the singer.
I think the real problem here is that the original ALERT didn't contain enough information for readers to judge its reliability. We had to trust the unnamed Canwest reporter or editor who wrote the description “sources close to the singer.” I don't expect a full list in an alert, but perhaps the source closest to the singer could be named. “sources close to the singer, including [name], [description of link to Lightfoot].”
Because unless there is something missing from Canwest's explanation of the mistake (linked somewhere above) or unless the phrase means something different within a newsroom than it does to me, I think “sources close to the singer” was misleading.
But if you play with unnamed sources, it'll burn you in the end. Which is not a criticism of you, David, but is a criticism of your employer in this case (and the media in general).
All I know is that back pre-internet era, that kind of sloppy work on your part, Mr. Akin, would have probably got you fired, if not severely reprimanded.
I'm sorry, I don't buy your excuses or apologies one bit. A journalist of your experience and alleged caliber should have and would have done his homework before doing what you did.
Saying it was all Twitter's fault doesn't make it so.
We as a society expect to be informed; we want news as it happens. Should we expect conventional journalists, the overworked and underpaid, to provide this to us via twitter? Not as it stands. Not until the line between professional and personal has been drawn more clearly.
Should you spreading this rumour (now known as publicity) be called sloppy journalism? I don't think so. I won't give twitter, or your twitter account, that power, not yet atleast.
Twitter is all about credibility. In your attempts to justify your tweet, you've succeeded only in tarnishing Canwest and an ALERT system that seems to be as flawed as twitter because it lacks accountability and explanation.
I think the explanation is key here. You gambled when you made that tweet. It was vague enough that if it had been true you would have been one of the first to break the news. Unfortunately for you, it was false, and it bit you.
If you continue to use your twitter to occasionally pass along these unverified Alerts, your followers will most likely assume all of your tweets lack credibility.
You’re abilities as a journalist are not in question, but if you’re going to tweet you should probably check your facts.
Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to throw in some some indication that this was a cum grano salis situation where the data had not yet been vetted? Maybe preface the tweet with “Unverified:” ..?