>However, the caveat to that is that journalists are on Twitter, pay a lot of attention to Twitter, and report it as reality. Getting dogpiled on Twitter may not matter, but having it reported in newspapers may make it matter.

And how many people read newspapers?

The only thing that matters to a business is when people show up with placards in front of the business, or the CEOs house. The cases where that happens are so few and far between that by ignoring everything a newspaper writes you improve your business's performance by the simple fact you're not paying someone to waste time. The rest of it can be summed up as "don't get caught putting babies in blenders".