As it happens, I haven’t been receiving phone updates from my Twitter. I hadn’t even used it until a few weeks ago when I decided to ramp it up after the election, choosing to go online and view all Tweets on my account at the same time. And so then, last week I decided to actually receive a few tweets in real time on my phone – including that of President Donald J Trump. So, this may not be the fist time it has happened, but…
Last night I was watching the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley who noted that Pres. Trump had not yet responded with his intentions in regard to challenging his blocked travel ban. Within two minutes of Scott Pelley’s statement, my phone chirped, and there was the Donald, with this now famous Tweet:
SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017
Right away, I decided I would immediately retweet and started pulling up my Twitter account to do so online. Before I could even get to my online Twitter, about 90 seconds after Pres. Trump’s tweet, Scott Pelley casually interjected that CBS (and 16 million Trump followers) had just received word that Trump intends to challenge the ban. Mr. Pelley then read the all capitalized tweet for the viewers.
Well, as I say, this may have happened before, but I haven’t really seen any conjecture about the potentially ethical ramifications of this new age of real time Twitter feedback. For instance, should a news organization of that scope let any politician pull their chain like that? And what, loose the scoop? If Trump had placed a phone cal to respond, he couldn’t have gotten past the producers before the ten o’clock news. If he were on standby, at least they could be sure of who they were talking to. What if a hacker manged to send a fake tweet? Instead of reaching Trump’s 20 million followers (maybe not), the misinformation with the potential for immediate national security ramifications would go straight from the terrorist hacker to anchor desk and CBS’s 50 million (?) viewers, and all the others networks with evening news and their 200 million (?) viewers. What if a terrorist had broken into the White House, and the president was under duress to say something dangerous to national security? How do you analyze and vet out the President’s tweet in less than 90 seconds?
Maybe it’s just sour grapes. That fact is, I couldn’t respond quickly enough to retweet for my 12 (?) followers, and so was upstaged by… Scott Pelley. How can I get more followers when I’m up against that kind of competition. Well, to CBS and all the others, you can count on this – as God is my witness – I will continue to do my part to proliferate the national hysteria when this phenomena happens again !!!
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© 2017 – Jim Casey
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