Microblogging site Twitter, used to express opinion and enhance interaction, is becoming a significant double-edged sword in cyberspace.
Microblogging site Twitter, used to express opinion and enhance interaction, is becoming a significant double-edged sword in cyberspace. On Wednesday, Octavia Nasr, senior editor of Middle East affairs at CNN, was asked to leave the US television news network after tweeting in praise of the late Shiite cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.
Nasr, who joined CNN in 1990, said in a recent tweet that she was "sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah... One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot." Later, Nasr clarified that she had made an error of judgement about the spiritual head of the Hezbollah, designated a terrorist organisation by the US, and said that she was referring to his pioneering stand and work on women's rights.
The clarifications notwithstanding, the damage was done. Two decades with the channel came to an end for Nasr, over what she claimed was a simplistic remark. The news channel decided that her credibility had been compromised and she had to go.
A tweet is the cyber equivalent of the spoken word. A loose tongue and now even a loose tweet can put you in a tight spot
In a world where every word is closely followed, tweeting indiscriminately is equivalent to having a careless, casual conversation that could be reproduced with unfortunate consequences at a later stage.
In the post match-fixing era in cricket, one of the biggest controversies which threatened to chip away at the game's brittle credibility once again was the Indian Premier League's Kochi team controversy. The Shashi Tharoor-Sunanda Pushkar story began to unravel thanks to a tweet by IPL honcho Lalit Modi. Today, of course the row is still simmering but Tharoor-Pushkar seem to have made their exit from the headlines and are now presumably whispering tweet nothings into each other's ears.
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To get back to Nasr though, people will surely be wondering whether that clarification she gave about women's rights was true or was she simply trying to mitigate the damage and save her job. More questions follow, like: will people have to be apologetic or defensive about what they tweet? Why should people not tweet about what they feel? Is Twitter hemmed in by political correctness too? Can a tweet be used in a court of law? While there are no easy answers, one thing is clear ufffda tweet can have phenomenal consequences.
A tweet is the cyber equivalent of the spoken word. A loose tongue and now even a loose tweet can put you in a tight spot.u00a0
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