Saturday 30 January 2016

Twitter Posts in News Articles

It has become commonplace for internet news articles to include copies ('screen grabs", if you will) of Twitter postings.

This practice bothers me; it does not appear to be professional journalism.

In the past, when a news article wanted to quote a source, it did so.

Now, we have a repetition of statements; the Twitter account is copied into the news article, and then the article repeats what the twitter posting said.

Here is an example:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/01/29/pulitzer-prize-winning-techie-denied-white-house-security-clearance-ashkan-soltani/79544124/

If one of my students gave me this I would think "This is repetitive crap!" and give it right back.

However, I see this pattern in the internet news almost every day.

How has it come to be accepted as standard practice, given that it is an unnecessary restatement of information?

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