Tapper the Twitterer Instigated Special Olympics Tempest in Teapot.

[BurtWorm]

Now we can actually see how nonstories are made. Welcome to the 21st Century!

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_03/017378.php


TAPPER, TWITTER, AND ONLINE ETIQUETTE.... It was bound to be of interest to the political world anyway, but ABC News' Jake Tapper helped get the ball rolling on the Special Olympics/Obama story last night. He was first out of the gate with a news item and a report on the president's comment on his Twitter feed.

Not surprisingly, this generated the inevitable Drudge link. Tapper kept the discussion going with additional thoughts on potential Democratic hypocrisy (what if Bush had said the same thing) and potential Republican hypocrisy (conservatives usually hate political correctness).

My friend Adam Serwer noted some hypocrisy of his own:

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about press who moments ago believed the president had "too much on his plate" now deciding that the country should spend a whole day talking about an offensive joke.

In any case, you should know that Tapper's really disappointed about his 9 PM blog post getting picked up by Drudge, possibly driving the day and leading to all this "hypocrisy" when we have two wars and an economic crisis to deal with. That's the last thing Tapper wanted when he hyped this "breaking" news last night.

Soon after, Tapper blocked Adam from following his Twitter feed.

And around the same time, TPM was tweaking Tapper over his Twitter observations. So, Tapper blocked TPM from following his Twitter feed, too.

Now, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on Twitter etiquette; I'm not even on Twitter. But blocking those who offer mild criticism seems kind of petty. When it comes from a journalist who frequently addresses the importance of transparency, it's especially bad form.

[Lex]

1. It was happening here without Tapper's Twitter.

nt

[ErinBerin84]

2. people probably would have paid attention to it anyways.

I'm glad he apologized. But yeah, Jake Tapper is our Obama cigarette smoking watchdog, right? It's hard to take him seriously.

[stillcool]

3. Isn't Keith on before 9 p.m.?

seems to me he was first out of the gate.

[SpiralHawk]

4. ABC-Disney -- as if they had anything going on but spin and propaganda

Along with a growing horde of discerning Americans, I have no respect for or interest in any propaganda being slung by the corporate knee-benders at Disney-Republicon so-called 'news.'