On truth, Twitter, and truth on Twitter
Posted on 07. Jul, 2009 in New Media
This brief article in from Bicycle Retailer was surprisingly controversial yesterday. It reports VeloNews web editor Steve Frothingham talking to another publication about the difficulties of covering Lance Armstrong in the age of Twitter:
… Armstrong’s penchant for Twittering has caused VeloNews and others to re-think how they report news, and some are boycotting his tweets. “It’s one-sided,” Frothingham told E&P. “It’s just us sitting there taking what he’s giving. We can’t just not ask follow-up questions; we can’t ask any questions,” said Frothingham, a former editor at Bicycle Retailer & Industry News and for The Associated Press.
Responses to Frothingham’s lament have been mostly along the lines of “he just doesn’t get social media.” I think the opposite it true. Steve understands perfectly well that getting our news from high-profile social media users is more similar to getting it from advertisers than it is to getting it from traditional editorial media.
Make no mistake – Lance is advertising to you on Twitter. He’s using a powerful tool to cultivate and market his personal brand.* This is a huge difference from the way in which non-famous people used Twitter to disseminate information about the situation in Iran when the media couldn’t gain access. But it doesn’t mean Lance’s tweets don’t have value. They’re entertaining, informative, and insightful. We learn a lot from them that we wouldn’t otherwise know. But, as Frothingham points out, we are getting only the information that Lance wants us to have.
Without the media, this exchange between Lance and Paul Kimmage at the Tour of California wouldn’t have happened. Although it wasn’t exactly a feel-good moment, Lance handled it well and it added to our collective understanding.
To be fair, it’s not like everyone was perfectly transparent until Twitter came along. It’s always been possible to issue a self-congratuatory press release, say “no comment”, or refuse to grant interviews to journalists who might say something negative. Even if you do have to face questions from a hostile reporter, proper “media training” can teach to change the subject and say exactly what you want people to hear. Much to his credit, Lance provided a direct, thoughtful response to Kimmage.
Furthermore, the media certainly has its own shortcomings when it comes to the truth. Publications must show deference to advertisers and to the sensibilities of their audiences. Reporters’ personal biases and fondness for their subjects affect their stories. Journalistic objectivity is an unachievable ideal. Still, my experience is that, in aggregate, reporters care more about giving you the unaltered truth than advertisers do.
As an advertiser myself, I don’t mean to say that you are being lied to. But it’s no secret that advertising is supposed to make you feel a certain way about brands and products. Ultimately, brands want you to buy stuff. However, advertising can also have legitimate meaning – like Livestrong campaigns that truly affect people in a positive way. In particular, what I enjoy about social media marketing (and why I think it resonates with consumers) is that it’s such a great chance for advertising to be compelling on its own merits.
But if this debate had been going on a few years, the ultimate logical extension of the anti-Frothingham camp would have been, “Who needs the White House press corps when we have @GeorgeWBush?” That’s a scary thought. Personally, I’m glad we have a range of sources that includes both athletes and journalists on Twitter, writing blogs, and in the traditional media. All are significant voices in a conversation that’s an important part of my life. But if I had to choose one, I’d rather have VeloNews.com than @lancearmstrong.
*: I do the same thing on a 1:2,875 scale.
Homepage photo by Richard Masoner
Frothington has good points about the necessity of followup and background.
Thanks for the attribution on the photo!
Josh, I agree that journalists are more interested in sharing the unaltered truth than are advertisers, however the collective consciousness of twitter (and most other social media so far) is intensely personal. Most participants are non-famous people, and to cast out the entire Twitter channel as ‘personal advertising’ seems hasty. I suspect (but I cannot prove) that most people using twitter can be just as interested as journalists, and sometimes even more so, in sharing what they believe to be the unaltered truth. They just might not share the eloquence of a seasoned writer. Granted, 140 characters does tend to level even that playing field.
Lance always picks his words carefully: he’s a pro, and he’s done this all before. Whether via Twitter or live interview, both are valid information sources and, when appropriate, entirely quotable. But my twitter account? Clearly not so quotable.
As for the slippery slope of @GeorgeWBush – nobody said, as far as I can tell, that we should ever rely on one source of information for any news, be it an interview or one single twitter account. It’s the ability to read the aggregate real-time conversation on twitter that makes it so uniquely powerful. Still, this all remains independent from the requirements of fact checking, and the social dynamics of who we trust.
I see your point, and I tried specifically to delineate between the way that Lance uses Twitter and the way that non-famous people have used Twitter in a historically significant way to tell the world what they believe to be the unaltered truth about what is happening in Iran. That’s just one example of many.
Maybe you and I interpreted reactions differently yesterday. I thought I saw a lot of “Why do I need this Steve Frothingham guy when I have @lancearmstrong?”
[...] a damaged brand. The good news is that always being right presents opportunities for competitive On truth, Twitter, and truth on Twitter – kadisco.com 07/07/2009 This brief article in from Bicycle Retailer was surprisingly controversial [...]
Clearly we are better off for having Velonews and their crew, along with all the other journalists out busting their butts trying to cover our particular bunch of lycra clad heroes. This was never an either/or question. Would you agree that both, when intelligently combined, are better than either one alone?
It seems that there are competing dynamics here that we are all trying to sort out. Lance has figured out a way to keep an extremely large body of potential donors/supporters for his cause tuned in and, potentially, “at the ready”. Frothingham doesn’t seem to have sorted out how he can use it to his advantage (though wasn’t he the one who noticed the lack of tweets and used that to deduce Lance’s arrival time in Sydney for the Tour Down Under?) The rest of us are still trying to figure out how to both publish our own thoughts as well as read others’.
The bigger your following, the harder it is to use Twitter (or any social media app for that matter) to have a two-way connection. The smaller your following, the easier it is to use it in innovative ways. Example, what if Frothingham used it to crowd-source questions for his next Lance interview and then gave his followers a sneak peek at the resulting article? A lot easier to do when your followers are 1:2,875 of Lance’s.
@ Chris: Oh, absolutely. Traditional editorial media is far from infallible; the more intelligent sources we have, the better. And Lance, Levi, Shaq, and others deserve a lot of credit for using social media in a more valuable way than “My Trek Madone, SRAM RED components, Bontrager wheels, Giro helmet, Oakley glasses and Nike shoes were awesome today!”
But as I commented on your excellent post, individual sources are becoming able to distribute one-sided information more quickly and to more people than the media can distribute their (hopefully) unbiased coverage. That wasn’t possible before social media, especially Twitter, and we don’t know what the long-term affects will be.
That’s not a dig against Lance or anyone in particular, but a more general concern.
Everyone should read Chris’ post at http://creativextreme.com/?p=268
On a related note, the heads of some major media companies have painted a bleak picture of the demand from advertisers and audiences for real journalism.
http://adage.com/brightcove/lineup.php?lineup=1266084202