Twitch Forks and Burning Tworches
When the Twitterati smell blood, they don't let go. Since the Carter Ruck owning this week, confidence has grown and whatever seems to upset the masses spreads incredibly quickly. Mob rule has gone online. BURN THE WITCH. The targets today are the
TFL rager
and Jan Moir
. Should TFL guy be fired? Yes - he seems like an utter arse, but then what do you expect from Underground staff? TB has seen a lot worse.The story nicely demonstrated a point TB often makes about armed citizens breaking down the walls of reporting news. From video camera to blog to twitter to front page of the Standard. In house communications for various companies must be in a quite a panic about how to deal with Twitter storms, just as they took huge steps to avoid getting "blogged".
As for Jan Moir? Well the article was ridiculous, but so was the reaction to it. If you don't agree with what someone says, it doesn't mean they should be fired for saying it. By all means complain if you think she has broken the rules, but to try silence her... really? Bad things happen when a society goes down that path. Pack it in and don't buy the Mail if you don't like it.
It's possible to overplay the role of Twitter, but it is then again lethal for some to underestimate it's power.
Posts
6 comments:
Carter-Ruck wasn't owned - the injunction on the material I cannot mention is still in place.. and Twitter has mostly forgotten about that.
And now Carter-Ruck is arguing that discussion about its client in Parliament should be sub-judice.. but again, Twitter doesn't care to carry on a fight for too long - any pretend victory will do!
PR people will be taking note of all these things.
As for Jan Moir.. don't feed the trolls!
Anon - the injunction is in place, but everyone knows what Trafigura did, and the report is now easily available to anyone who wants it. The lifting of the injunction over reporting Parliament was de jure, the report injunction was de facto.
The Jan Moir case is being oversold here TB. I've not heard many people calling for her to be silenced - this isn't a censorship campaign. It's calling out awful journalism, bigoted views, and holding journalists accountable for what they write.
Should she be fired? Maybe, for being bad at her job, but that wasn't really the point of the trending topic was it?
What Twitter has done is bring that American mentality that if an organization does something you don't like you show launch a full out war on it. Forget no longer subscribing or writing a letter of complaint, you should dispatch yourself to their head offices and catapult the baby's diapers at them while using your phone to harangue their advertisers in to dropping all association, while using your Blackberry to tweet a bunch of other tweebs to do the same.
As for Jan Moir? Well the article was ridiculous
Bollocks TB, it was more than ridiculous, it was nasty, bigoted and spiteful. The poor chap hasn't even been buried yet. It's not a question of free speech but of normal human decency.
It's a classic case of power without responsibility from the Mail but when twitter (free speech) bites back she doesn't like it up her.
It was one of the most hateful articles I have ever read. And no she shouldn't be banned. This is about people speaking out against rubbish journalism, it's not about censorship. In my view she should be sacked, but not because of some PC censorship, just cos she did a rubbish job!
Her piece was saying that the coroners report was basically rubbish
Oh and Carter ruck have ended their attempts to keep the report secret