Do You REALLY Get Your News From Twitter?

I love Twitter. I'm on it on my laptop, on my phone and eventually on my Samsung tablet when I get one. It can be entertaining, informative, whatever you want it to be -- depending on who you follow.

But I do cringe when someone says they now get their news from Twitter and hope they don't mean in the literal sense, as in whatever someone posts, they believe it and call it "news."

Don't misunderstand; I do know that some people get their news from Twitter in the sense that they see a link someone tweeted, click on it and lo and behold, it's news from a credible source. Twitter is also great because live accounts of events (Iran election, Kanye West's latest situations and so on) come directly from the tweeting public as they happen.

However, all we have to do is look at the number of celebrities that tweeters kill off daily, the number of rumors that swirl in an instant and the rampant misspellings of things that may be news (but frankly, we're just not sure) to remember that Twitter is full of regular, everyday people. People who don't necessarily have the access or know how to actually report breaking news. It's kind of like getting your research from Wikipedia...wait, you don't do that, do you?

I was on Twitter when Ron Isley (@theRealRonIsley) tweeted about Teena Marie's death. While I acknowledged that he sent out the tweet with one of my own, I immediately became what I described as "a Googling fool" to find some verification. It was amazing the watch the news outlets catch up with Twitter posts, but it was eventually a journalist, Roland Martin (@rolandsmartin) whose retweets confirmed it for the Twitterverse. Twitter seemed to know Michael Jackson died before mainstream outlets but I still waited on a credible verification before I broke out the old CDs and candles; I wondered about the people who simply took others' word for it without any confirmation.

It's those kind of blindly retweeting people who may be to blame for the latest celeb death fiasco -- those posting about the supposed death of Nelson Mandela  when the former South African president is quite alive, although ill.

In my humble opinion, these situations show that many stories are just rumors until they are confirmed, even if a news source (CNN, MSNBC, Fox and the like are all on Twitter) verifies via the microblogging site. If that is the case, you didn't get your news from Twitter -- you got it from journalists who are using Twitter.

So my good tweeters, if you INSIST on getting your news from Twitter, here's a tip: follow a reporter.

Bridgette Outten is a journalist and media consultant with The Write Vision Group, Inc.  Her background is in print journalism and she has written hundreds of articles for newspapers and online publications. At The Write Vision Group, Bridgette advises nonprofits and small businesses on how they can get media attention for their programs and efforts. Meanwhile, she blogs on all things journalism.