A blog post

Are Reporters Quoting Twitter Ghosts?

Posted on the 28 July, 2009 at 2:22 pm Written by in Tweetexorcist.com

Celebrities Tweet, Reporters Repeat

I don’t follow Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, on Twitter, but I know what she (or someone on her staff) says in her microblogging missives. She tweets and the mainstream media repeats. In fact, it’s become standard practice for broadcast and print reporters to freely quote the tweets of celebrities. I began to wonder: are reporters quoting Twitter ghosts?

Twitter recently launched a “Verified Person” program that confirms a celebrity account is officially associated with the particular celebrity, but that doesn’t guarantee the account isn’t ghosted. I decided to ask a few reporters about their policies on authenticating Twitter sources. Here is what they said: (I have emailed with all three of these reporters so I’m confident they are tweeting themselves.)

Authenticating Twitter Sources: What Reporters are Saying

John A. Byrne, Editor-in-Chief, Businessweek.com, “We need to contact the person and tell him or her we’re going to quote from a Twitter stream in advance.”

Lance Ulanoff, Editor-in-Chief, PCMag.com, “I’ve never quoted some1 off of Twitter, but I would tell my staff 2 verify quotes verbally, so you avoid quoting ghost writers.”

Ken Wheaton, journalist, Advertising Age, “We don’t have a policy either way. But to be honest, we don’t go looking at Twitter to get quotes from high-profile Twitterers–whatever those may be. I think in those times we quote Twitter, it’s in a story about a brand and typically meant to illustrate a brand has done something bad or good — and that can be from any Twitterer. If there is some sort of branding expert, ad exec, marketer on Twitter who says something we’re interested in, while we may quote that Tweet, if it’s for a new story, we’d likely follow up to get even more information out of him or her. (And it goes without saying that if it is a big name in the business, we’d verify that it’s his or her actual Twitter account).

What Do You Think?

Should all reporters verify sources via phone or email before lifting their quotes from Twitter? Considering that public relations professionals often craft quotes for press releases, does it matter if the celebrity wrote the tweet themselves? Is dictating tweets to staff ghost tweeting?

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some comments

There are currently 2 of them
  1. Kelly Rusk 28 July 2009 at 6:16 pm permalink

    Like you said… do reporters always verify quotes in press releases before printing them? How is this any different?

  2. Gail Sideman 30 July 2009 at 12:45 am permalink

    Reporters don’t always verify quotes in news releases, but they owe it to their audiences to do so.


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