This past week, I tried to visit Armon Bassett's Twitter page, only to be greeted by the "This Page No Longer Exists" default page.
If you care to connect the dots you can probably conclude that this is because of his recent arrest. But this post isn't about Armon. Chris Littman, an alumnus of Ohio University, blogged recently about the Bassett situation.
The curious thing for me is why athletes think they are invincible on the Internet. Littman's blog hints at the reason why Armon might have pursued the course of action he did on that night.
I asked my journalism professor, Hans K. Meyer about Twitter and whether or not journalists were permitted to publish Tweets as facts in a published medium (NOTE: I'm not getting extra credit for including hiim in my post!)
His definitive answer was YES, because it is in the public domain.
His definitive answer was YES, because it is in the public domain.
He also raised an interesting point: Should we protect athletes from themselves when deciding whether or not to publish their Tweets?
The answer to that is NO. These men and women are presenting themselves to the public when they publish Tweets, Facebook statuses, and blogs. As journalists, we are trained to always be mindful of the way we present our arguments, stories, editorials, etc., because one fact or quote gone astray spells doom for the trust we have tried to build with our readers.
If an athlete does not take the same caution to protect their image in the public setting, then why should their readership, including journalists, hold them to a different standard?
This question will be answered differently by many, but just to add one more thought, I will ask this. If you're an athlete that has thousands of kids looking up to you, because you're the "it" athlete right now, would you want those kids making the same choices you are?
That's a telling question.
Posts
