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The Insidious Impact of Twitter
American Thinker.com ^ | July 22, 2020 | Steve McCann

Posted on 07/22/2020 5:32:29 AM PDT by Kaslin

Twitter claims to be a modern-day public square wherein those without a forum can discuss, debate and share their opinions and views. However, it has evolved into a primary source of fabricated stories and copy farming for the media, the principal driver of policy for the political parties, particularly the Democrats, and a vehicle to intimidate businesses and major corporations.

On July 14 Bari Weiss, former New York Times opinion writer and editor, penned a scathing letter of resignation addressed to the publisher of the Times wherein she stated: “Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.”

A recent study by the Columbia Journalism Review concluded:

Twitter may not have the same globe-spanning reach such as Facebook, but one group of professional users has adopted it en masse: journalists. The lure of an always-on, news-heavy social network that includes access not just to an audience of consumers but direct input from news makers like Donald Trump is impossible to resist.

In a study to find out if journalists ascribe too much importance to Twitter, an experiment was conducted with 200 journalists. Some of the subjects saw only headlines from the Associated Press website while others were randomly shown tweets that contained the AP headlines but had been manipulated to look like anonymous tweets by any random Twitter user. The researchers then asked the journalists to rate the newsworthiness of the tweets. The result? Journalists who said they spent a lot of time on Twitter and rely on it for their work ranked the anonymous tweets as having equal credibility or more than the actual AP stories. This was particularly true for the younger, considerably less experienced journalists, who are now in the majority.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: twitter

1 posted on 07/22/2020 5:32:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

The ability of Twitter and Facebook to amass mobs and give a megaphone, with the protection of anonymity, has been a very damaging game changer.


2 posted on 07/22/2020 5:35:42 AM PDT by Lizavetta
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To: Lizavetta

I have long maintained Twitter was the new journOlist...and then Trump took over the TwitterWorld...for which they will never forgive him.


3 posted on 07/22/2020 5:43:09 AM PDT by MAGAthon (g)
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