Social networking tool Twitter sparked a storm this week when a journalist posted live updates from a three year old’s funeral. Covering an actual death over the internet in real time would be a different story all together. Because this technology is new, the rules are still being defined.
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The immediacy of social media tools like Twitter is producing such new questions about appropriate journalism and reporting that this is bound to be a hot topic for a bit.Without the retrospective context allowed by traditional journalism, and even to a certain extent by blogging, Twitter and other microblogging or instant messaging services are obviously going make many journalists uncomfortable until we all become more familiar with instantaneous information gathering.
Ethics... mmm... I guess this falls into the same category as to why the paparazzi are still in business. If nobody bought their photos then they would stop it (well for business reasons of course).TV has long covered state funerals and similar events. It was only a matter of time before this spilled over.Real question here is - who was following this? Or more importantly why? It just seems a little creepy to me.