The Boy Who Tweeted Wolf

Have you ever heard of the boy who cries wolf? The little boy is unethical and no one believes him when he needs them too.

What about the boy who tweets wolf. Is it unethical to tweet information you don’t know is correct? What about retweeting information?

In today’s world news is created and travels fast. No longer do you have to wait by the T.V. to find out why there is smoke, you can check your twitter for a minute- by- minute update of the fire.
With the new speed of information comes the opportunity (for some) to be misleading or flat out lie.

According to an article on Mashable.com two individuals decided to tweet that schools were being attacked and children were being kidnapped in the state of Veracruz.

The tweets were false all the children were safe in school several accidents and chaos erupted because parents became frantic.
Mexico dubbed these two “twitter terrorists” and they are now facing up to 30 years in prison.

There is a huge debate on if legal action can be taken, but ethically is it right? Giving false information at any time on any medium is unethical. If you know what you are saying is not the truth you are lying, and lying is unethical.

Mike Wise is another great example of Twitter’s importance in distributing the news. Wise is Washington Post reporter who wanted to demonstrate how bloggers and Twitter users will post information without fact checking.

His attempt at proving a point backfired when he tweeted from an account that stated he was Washington Post reporter. His tweet (which was untrue) linked to a blog with rumored football trade information.

People took his tweet seriously and chaos ensued. He was soon suspended from his job and the credibility he had gained over 15 years was gone in time it took to write a tweet.

Wise tried to show how unethical others were being on Twitter and while blogging but instead he wound up being a case for his own point. The Post took actions they deemed necessary to fix behavior they did not agree with.

While Wise and the “Twitter Terrorists” both had actions taken against them for their unethical behavior, they are just two examples. There have been millions of tweets written with fake information, some with fun pranks and others with terrifying news.

Writing false information in a tweet is not only unethical but it is also lazy. Checking your facts is not reserved for news articles and textbooks; you should be checking information for your blog posts, tweets and Facebook posts as well.

If people continue to see Twitter as a way to be pranksters and a way to create information then the social media platform will continue to lose credibility.

Twitter should never be someone’s only source of news, but It should be an option to get news updates. I hope that people will be ethical about their content to preserve Twitter’s reputation and their own.