![]() “What Were You Wearing” was a public discussion from the outset. The median active Twitter account has 61 followers. She had 13, 000 followers when she started this conversation, which placed her comfortably in the top fraction of 1% of all active Twitter users. ![]() Whatever the ethics of quoting the chitchat of obscure users, they aren’t relevant to this case.Įven before BuzzFeed, Fox was writing for a larger audience than many small-town newspaper reporters. Some more sophisticated commenters have argued that that BuzzFeed erred because the tweets came from private citizens, whose tweets should somehow be considered more private than those of public figures. In principle, anything you tweet could have an audience of millions, even without extra-twittorial media attention.Ī Change.org petition is making the preposterous demand that Twitter somehow require journalists to get permission from all users in order to quote their tweets, not just sexual assault victims. You’re not only putting them in writing in a public forum, you’re using a platform modeled on a chain letter: Whatever you tweet can be retweeted by your followers, who can be retweeted by their followers, and so on. If you just want to chat with your friends on Twitter, take a moment to set your account to “private.” If you don’t, keep in mind that you are publishing your thoughts. Critics contrasted BuzzFeed’s article to a similar piece run by The Root ’s Jenée Desmond Harris, who talked with Fox before publishing her tweets.Īll discussions of journalistic ethics and Twitter must proceed from the following fact: According to Twitter’s privacy policy, tweets are public by default. Supporters of Fox asked BuzzFeed and Poynter’s Kelly McBride-who wrote a piece defending Testa’s actions - to take down their articles. Fox demanded that her photo be removed and BuzzFeed ultimately relented.Ī firestorm of criticism and a debate on journalistic ethics ensued. In the post, BuzzFeed reproduced the photo that Fox used on her public twitter profile. Testa did not, however, get permission from Fox to write a story about the “What Were You Wearing?” phenomenon. This is in keeping with the longstanding journalistic tradition of protecting the identities of rape victims when a story identifies them as such. Testa’s write-up included several tweets from survivors, which she used with their permission. Roller skates for the 1 st part of the night - I was 15 & it was my first date,” was one reply.īuzzFeed reporter Jessica Testa noticed the outpouring of tweets and wrote a post about the “What Were You Wearing” conversation. Answers poured in from women raped in their pajamas, in their work clothes, and in outfits they wore as little girls. Last week, Christine Fox (Twitter handle: asked her 13, 000 Twitter followers to describe what they were wearing when they were sexually assaulted.
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