Skip to content
Join our Newsletter
  1. Home
  2. Opinion

Betrayed by my own Twitter feed

When is something private no longer private? When you post it on Twitter, of course. Paulina Gretzky knows this. Any of the Kardashians know this. I know this. Here's my less explicit example.
Cale Cowan
metro quote

When is something private no longer private?

When you post it on Twitter, of course.

Paulina Gretzky knows this. Any of the Kardashians know this.

I know this.

Here's my less explicit example.

At the beginning of December, the Abbotsford Mission Times newspaper was closed. From 2001 to 2003 or so, I was its editor. I was sad my old paper had closed and said so on Twitter.

The tweet had been up for maybe 10 minutes when my phone rang. It was a producer from the radio station linked in the tweet and she wondered if I'd be willing to go on the air to discuss this development. (Journalists do love to report about journalism.)

I politely declined, not wanting to get hemmed into a discussion about the business sense of closing a newspaper. Or, worse, a talk about the viability of print journalism. (Bright! I assure you.)

Was this the end of my involvement in this story? Not quite.

Recently, when Googling my own name (admit it, you do it too), I came across an article on the closure in Vancouver Metro.

I was a little suprised to find I had been quoted.

metro quote

I couldn't really complain. I wrote it. I posted it and they had a link to my Twitter post to prove it.

Unwittingly, by broadcasting my feelings via Twitter, I had become part of the public discussion, just not to the level the good people at News 1130 had wanted.

(I also had a post about the same subject on my Facebook page, but apparently Metro reporters don't read Facebook. Nor do they call the authors of tweets to verify they are the person who posted a comment.)

It's a good reminder that few things we send into cyberspace are private, and certainly not those things we post to Twitter.

A similar point was brought home by a recent blog post from the public editor of the New York Times.

In that case, this tweet from a rather famous movie critic was repurposed (and rewritten) in a print advertisement.

Truthfully, I'd probably just be flattered if something I tweeted was used — partially or otherwise — in an ad that cost $17,000.

If you are interested in more information on the acceptable uses of tweets, Twitter has information on their website under the very scary heading of Policies & Violations.

@CaleCowan

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Previous articles