Obama, Kanye West and the Trouble With Twitter
The president was off the record with CNBC when he called the singer a ‘jackass’ for interrupting Taylor Swift at the MTV video awards. But ABC News employees overheard the exchange and ran with it.
Matea Gold, LA Times: Call it another case of being too fast on the Twitter.
The perils of dashing off observations on the micro-blogging site were brought into sharp relief Monday when several overeager ABC News employees — including “Nightline” co-anchor Terry Moran — rushed to tweet that President Obama had called Kanye West a “jackass” for interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards.
The problem: Obama made the comment during off-the-record chatter as he prepared to do an interview with John Harwood, CNBC’s chief Washington correspondent.
ABC News’ Washington bureau shares a network fiber line with CNBC, and producers there monitoring CNBC’s feed heard the exchange. What they didn’t hear, apparently, was the explicit agreement CNBC made with the White House that Obama’s pre-interview chitchat was off the record.
The president weighing in on the biggest pop culture story of the day was too delicious to ignore. Soon, e-mails about Obama’s comment began circulating internally at ABC. Before news executives had determined whether the material was publishable, Moran and a handful of other ABC News staffers posted the remark on Twitter.
“Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won,” Moran tweeted. “Now THAT’S presidential.”
