Hacker News Reader

Comment by endersshadow | Hacker News Reader

Good lord, fired? For re-tweeting an AP tweet? You may want to do independent verfication, but hell, it's the AP. It's not like somebody set up an a AD account and tweeted it as a fake AP. I don't blame anybody for re-tweeting that.

What is with people and wanting people's jobs over every little thing these days? In the land of Twitter and Facebook, you're not allowed to make an occasional honest mistake any more.

View on HN

An honest mistake is misspelling someones name. Retweeting that the President of the United States has been injured without taking 10 seconds to establish the veracity of story is just inexcusable and lazy journalism which could someday get people hurt.

Oh, get over yourself. If they re-tweeted it immediately, then went to get more info on it, found out that it was false, and then apologized/deleted it, who cares? It came from a particularly reputable source, so simply clicking one "re-tweet" button does not a fire-able offense make.

I'm glad to know that you've never made an assumption based on authority, a minor mistake, or even taken a shortcut in your career, though.

Calm down friend. I'm merely stating that my belief that as journalist, one is in a trusted position of power to disseminate news to the masses and with that power (excuse the cliche) comes responsibility. Blindly retweeting sensationalist things without fact checking is no better than shouting "Fire!" in a crowded building.

It's an "honest mistake" only because we've accepted that "breathless-by-the-second-breaking trumps truthful" is an acceptable standard for news. The journos that hit "retweet" presumably did it because they felt their followers would appreciate the elite-ness of knowing 15 seconds earlier than their less-in-the-know friends.

IMO, there is not even theoretical public utility in immediately sharing a rumour, no matter how juicy, rather than confirming it and breaking it 10 minutes later. If you must, share it with a fat disclaimer that you're currently confirming it.

Maybe it's the Silicon Valley mindset where everyone switches jobs every six months anyway (as companies go bust et al) so being fired is basically a slap on the wrist, career-wise.

I, for one, would prefer getting my news from organisations that emphasise truthfulness over job security.

Apparently mistakes are no longer allowed. I was just reading this piece earlier today about a North Dakota news anchor who was fired over an open mic mistake. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/22/north-dakot...

To be fair, that was his first day and he was needlessly swearing trying to pronounce the guy's name right after not checking to see if they were live, and then completely fumbled once his co-anchor turned it over to him. I think it was completely reasonable for them to fire him over that - no one would have taken him seriously afterwards. Also, if you look at his actual written news reports on that network's site, they were littered with misspellings and grammatical errors, and the background on his official Twitter has vulgar statements that just don't line up with the profile picture of him in a suit. He's all-around unprofessional and that might have been the icing on the cake.

> Apparently mistakes are no longer allowed.

If a rule was passed that made it a firing offense to run with an unconfirmed tip, the entire news industry would collapse overnight.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com