Posted in On the DL Podcast
16 comments
08/30 2010

DL426: Mike Wise on Big Ben Tweet, ProFootballTalk, Social Media

Posted by Dan Levy.

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Thanks to the quick work of Kogod, I was able to talk with Mike Wise of the Washington Post this afternoon about becoming public enemy #1 on Twitter today after posting this tweet: “Roethlisberger will get five games, I’m told.”

It’s unsourced, and was followed by other erroneous and misleading tweets, as part of a bit for his radio show. The problem? Not everyone was listening to his radio show. Most notably, ProFootballTalk. They are not fans of Mike Wise today.

Listen to the audio below, but here are some of Wise’s comments about the situation. First, technology failed him, and cause a lot of people a lot of wasted energy tracking down (and writing about) this news.

“Where I screwed up was, I literally put a tweet right after that saying, ‘can’t reveal my sources…oh yeah, it’s a casino employee in Lake Tahoe’ and so I get this ‘Twitter is over-booked, try back later.’ So the actual secondary tweet doesn’t go come out until…a  half hour to an hour later and I was on the radio show at the time and I didn’t even look up for 20 minutes to see that it hadn’t tweeted.”

On making people track down stories based on a joke tweet:

“Bottom line: I picked a lousy way to show we have no credibility in this medium, in the social networking medium, and that nobody checks these things out. It was just not a good way to do it. If i had to do it all over again I would have picked another way.”

Jason La Canfora tweeted this (and other things) about Wise: “If I’m the Washington Post, I’m thinking seriously about suspending a sports columnist. No surprise the Big Ben tweet was a hoax.”

The reply:

“In these kind of instances, you find out who is making sure you’re okay and who has your back and who wants to pile on. This is a good moment for me personally to find out who is a peripheral friend and who actually is a person who has no idea the genesis of this and how it came about.”

On using his Twitter account to break news (or on the fact that people thought he was breaking news):

“I’ve never broken news on my Twitter account in my life. The only news I ever broke on my Twitter account was that Shaq is not, in fact, engaged to Hoops. That’s not exactly what I would call breaking news.

“I’m a columnist. I have fun on that Twitter account. It’s used as an outreach for other readers and other people, that’s what the Post gave me the account for. Now, that does not preempt me from any of the Twitter rules that we have that apply to this kind of stuff, and I have ever reason to apologize for…not everybody is listening to the radio show. It’s my fault.”

On Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk:

“This is what he does. This is a guy…of all people. I don’t mind some people, with what I would call integrity in this business, saying ‘you’re an idiot.’ In Florio’s case, I guess he called me a D-I-C-K…I don’t mind some people doing that. Mike Florio is probably the last person on Earth that should be criticizing anybody on this. This is the reason why I did something like this. Again, I picked a lousy avenue.

“You’re not checking out a major story like that before you post it?


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Posted on August 30, 2010 at 5:34PM

 

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  1. TSWSarah
    08/30 2010

    I’m all for people tweaking the ill-informed Florio, but maybe Wise should have considered another way of making his point. (Usually accomplished by journalists by being right to someone else’s wrong.)

    (Although Wise seems to be taking much more heat for planting the false story than Spencer Hall did for doing the same to TBL. Different players and different circumstances, but similar motives for exposing poor reporting. Maybe if Wise had more of a national reputation for being a merry prankster, instead of having WaPo name behind him.)

  2. Hank
    08/30 2010

    I think the major difference between the Spencer Hall/TBL situation and this is that Wise trafficked on his own reputation (and, by proxy, that of his employer) in an attempt to fool. The model/Sanchez story was an anonymous tip, without any credibility to fall back on. My site once was the beneficiary of such trust by TBL (the halcyon days of the BS Report inviting then quietly uninviting the porn star Christian into a fantasy basketball league). But even then there was an easy source material to reference.
    The easy way to hold reporters’ feet to the fire is to actually do some work and see how the validity of past Tweets holds up. But that would take much longer than typing 140 characters.

  3. Mike Wise Wishes He Didn’t Do That Thing He Did [Media Meltdowns] | Star Talk
    08/30 2010

    [...] Wise attempts to do some damage control after, you know, making stuff up. He got Florio heated, so we’ll forgive him a little bit. [...]

  4. Mike Wise apologizes for fake Ben Roethlisberger tweet | Off the Record (OTR)
    08/30 2010

    [...] his radio show, but he forgot that not everyone was listening to his show. In a podcast available here, he explains what he was doing and why he was doing [...]

  5. rob
    08/30 2010

    Florio breaks news! Wise is a hack journalist at best

  6. Two Sports Media Issues, Mike Wise and Jay Mariotti
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    [...] cap it off, Mike Wise talked with On The DL’s Dan Levy at Press Coverage and subsequently [...]

  7. Tom
    08/30 2010

    “This is the reason why I did something like this. Again, I picked a lousy avenue.”

    But wasn’t that the point of the hoax? That twitter can be bad if people don’t follow-up with you? He should be suspended, what he did was childish, unprofessional garbage. This reflects way worse on Wise than it does on Mike Florio.

  8. DMV: I Would Prefer That McNabb Play | Mr. Irrelevant, a D.C. Sports Blog by the Brothers Mottram
    08/30 2010

    [...] Mike Wise tweets fake news, gets raked over the coals for it, apologizes. [PFT, SB Nation D.C., D.C. Sports Bog, Press Coverage] [...]

  9. Mike Wise, Faking Tweets and Why It’s Not Okay « State of the Fourth Estate
    08/30 2010

    [...] that those who have a certain air of authority often are believed fully without further vetting. As he told Dan Levy of Press Coverage yesterday afternoon: “Bottom line: I picked a lousy way to show we have no credibility in this medium, in the social [...]

  10. ThunderingBlurb
    08/30 2010

    Wise’s spin is impressive. Does he NOT get he IS a legitimate source? People are supposed to call him to follow up for stuff he says when they are reportign what he did? He traded on his ‘trust currency’ and he burned everyone who trusted him to not pay with us. So he never broke a story on twitter? Who was to say he would never do so? How would you know?

    I also call bullcrap on the fail whale on his tweet ‘right afterwards’. Very convenient.

    BTW – it’s one thing if I tweet out something and legitmate sources don’t fact check me. I’m not a highly thought of journalist (yet? can i say yet?). Wise is.

    He screwed us to prove an arrogant point and instead proved that ‘legitimate’ journalists are just as prone to stupdity as bloggers, social networkers and the rest of us.

    I heard he got suspended a month. Deserves EVEY second of it.

  11. Mp3 Pod » Blog Archive » “Trending: Justin Bieber?” WHAT THE (insert cuss word here)?
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  12. On Mike Wise | Slow States
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    [...] attacked from several different angles. Immediately realized what he did was asinine. Apologized, again and again. A co-worker came to his defense. A rival organization went the snarky route. The [...]

  13. Max Power
    08/30 2010

    I agree wholeheartedly with ThunderingBlurb’s sentiments.

    I also wonder how the MSM would have treated this whole issue if it wasn’t done by Mike Wise, but instead by a lowly blogger without a journalism background. I won’t hold my breath waiting for the “Outside the Lines” episode on the ethics of this incident.

  14. Washington Post social media policy didn’t prevent Mike Wise’s Twitter hoax « The Buttry Diary
    08/30 2010

    [...] don’t have time or interest in going into this in depth, and plenty of blogs have already weighed in (I am jumping into this fray late). But I will make two [...]

  15. Sports Columnist Cunningly Uses Twitter To Prove That He’s Dumb | Defamer Australia
    08/30 2010

    [...] nobody checking facts or sourcing and 2. I’m an idiot. Apologies to all involved.” He also said, “Bottom line: I picked a lousy way to show we have no credibility in this medium, in the [...]

  16. This Week in Review: USA Today gets a mobile makeover, Twitter and trust, and a paywall’s ad struggles » Nieman Journalism Lab
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    [...] of Twitter as a news medium — one that many others probably share. Even after the episode, Wise maintained that it showed that nobody checks facts or sourcing on breaking stories on [...]