Mike Wise of WaPo fakes story to make a point

How much was this a talking point on his radio show today?

 

Seems to me he wasn't right, since my understanding is those who used his "story" attributed it to him.

PFT was not wrong in saying that Mike Wise of the Washington Post reported via Twitter that Roethlisberger will be suspended five games. If you are supposed to be a credible news source, others should be able to cite your work. If it is false, that comes back to you, not the outlet that cited your false report.

If his experiment was to catch someone just grabbing the information and going with it without checking it out, it seems to have failed.

 

Indeed.
This is so weird. Know the guy just a little bit, have no idea what in the world he thought he was accomplishing ... I have thought about, when I have the BlackBerry in hand watching a sport I don't cover as a fan, after a few beers, could I Tweet something I will wish I hadn't. That will happen, at some point. But I gather that is not what happened here.

 

I'm about as big a Mike Wise fan as there is. I'm also about as big an anti-plagiarism person as there is. I consider plagiarism a zero-tolerance offense. To me, faking a tweet on Big Ben is somewhere akin to plagiarism.

I don't know if a ridiculous on its face story would have made this appreciably better, but this was way too plausible to just fake. Ugh.

I'm extremely disappointed in Mike Wise, I'll say that much.

 

It's a shame he wasn't suspended from his radio show for a month, too. It's putrid.

What he showed here is that he's nothing more than a carnival barker. Congrats, Wise.

 

Didn't the Washington Post also give us the Janet Cooke saga? Not saying, just saying ...

 

I see it the other way, forever_town. To me, faking a story is worse than plagiarism because, with plagiarism, you're ripping off a fellow media person but passing along to your audience -- where right and wrong, facts vs. fiction and credibility of info matters more than credibility of the writer -- stuff that is true.

Making up something and spreading it? A legitimate media person? Way worse. You're poisoning the info pool because you're a malicious shit, you're not just pick-pocketing a colleague because you're a lazy ass.

Maybe Wise should have claimed he was looking for Twitter's blue font.

Maybe Wise should just change his last name.

Maybe the WaPo should give the guy more than a month off, which he'll use to focus on his moonlighting job while still being mentioned as one of their stars.

Wait, did Janet Cooke have a radio show too? [Just beat me, blueview!]

 

I kind of see this as the beginning of a larger emerging problem. Now, Wise didn't officially use the Post to launch this rumor. But as a Post employee they certainly endorse his Twitter account even though, technically speaking, it's HIS account. He just chooses to use the account to compliment his work done as a Post employee.

Having said that, how would a publisher be able to stop any of it's reporters from going nuts one day and writing all kinds of stuff that makes the paper look bad? If someone wanted to freely commit career suicide, they could get off some nice blasts and continue to do so because the publisher doesn't have access to that account.

When I was laid off from Gannett, I remember still having access to post to our newspapers blog even though I wasn't working there any longer. I had access to the account because it was mine, not theirs.

Twitter is the same way. Wise had the account, not Wapo, correct? That is so dangerous for a publisher. It's not like it had to pass the scrutiny of the editing process nor was it going in the printed product, which the Post controls. In our vigor to be first and demands on reporter's to tweet about every little item, we're heading towards a slippery slope.

 

ESPN is way ahead of you:

http://www.mediaite.com/online/not-a-ban-just-guidelines-espn-responds-to-new-twitter-policy/

 

What he did was wrong. But his point is correct. (Not that the ends justify the means, necessarily). The onus should be on us as reporters to verify such claims as bunk if we have the sources to do so rather than just running out and saying "Hey, someone else is reporting this!"

 

It was a stupid thing for Mike Wise to do, but why aren't we pointing the finger at Florio, a guy who rather haphazardly posts anything he can find and gets rewarded handsomely for it?