But today I briefly fell in to the trap myself. A couple of journalists Tweeted and and RT'd an apparent libel by juxtaposition ie a headline on a story that could have been thought to refer to an unrelated picture of someone alongside it. If read together it's possible they could have suggested a defamatory meaning about the person in the photo.
I RT'd it too, agreeing in my Tweet that it could indeed be a juxtaposition which might imply that an innocent person was guilty of wrongdoing. Luckily @jonhew immediately reminded me that any RTs could also constitute re-publication of a libel. Blushing, I deleted the RT straight away and checked no-one else had RT'd me.
This was followed by a good Twitter conversation with others about the fact that at least we had put it in context, rather than republishing potentially defamatory material as fact.
But a good reminder anyway. "Think before you publish - especially on social media..."
Lesson learnt.
I consoled myself with the fact that at least I didn't do as the Mail did and jump the gun on the verdict in the Amanda Knox trial .
And it was a good excuse to revisit this post on basic subbing tips by Peter Sands.
By the way, in a state of paranoia, before publishing this post I also checked that I was okay to use the Twitter symbol.
No comments:
Post a Comment