Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Honest. Fair. Everywhere. Except On Twitter.

When doing some housecleaning on our Twitter account, we noticed that we were following the Twitter accounts of pretty much all local media outlets, both broadcast and print, except for one.

We attempted to add the account of WOIO/19's "19 Action News" into our PC client - the excellent "Twhirl" - and the software responded that we couldn't view the station's profile. We were also unable to add "19actionnews" to the list of accounts we were already following.

It took a trip to Twitter's web interface to see the truth:

Yes, that's right, the newsroom of Raycom Media's largest market station has BLOCKED us from adding them to our Twitter "following" list! Blocked!

Gee, Reserve Square, was it something we said?

OK, maybe it was.

We had a lot of fun with that recent story about the "19 Action News" newsroom getting flack from the Cleveland Clinic, over breaking a story embargo.

We had a little fun, as well, with the messages out of the WJW "Fox 8" Twitter account, poking fun at WOIO's troubles with the Clinic...even though we pointed out that the medical giant's plan to block the local CBS affiliate from a press conference - because they jumped the gun one day on announcing it - might not have been the smartest idea.

Somewhere in there, someone at Reserve Square decided that we had to be taught a lesson, and blocked our Twitter account.

Or, maybe they were trying to block our own updates from showing up in their Twitter clients.

It wouldn't be the first time for such a move when it comes to online media blog and news sites. Just ask DCRTV's Dave Hughes, who occasionally learns that the IT department of a local media outlet has configured its web browsing filters to block his site.

Either way, it means absolutely nothing.

We have our "Clark Kent" Twitter account, and had no problem adding WOIO's Twitter feed there. (And no, your Primary Editorial Voice[tm] has no delusions about being "Superman".)

Even without that, a click on the main "19 Action News" Twitter username here still gets us the station's tweets, even if we're still logged in under the OMW Twitter login on the service's web interface.

Whew. We wouldn't wanna miss exciting tweets like this:

Got a dog? Gotta watch this next segment. It's about a patch of grass you keep indoors to stop accidents. Does it Work Danielle?

When a large market TV newsroom drops to the level of a petulant child ("There! We'll block them! That'll show 'em!"), it's a bit funny...

3 comments:

Cliff said...

Now that's funny. Now you'll miss the story during November sweeps about Sharon "tweeting" nekkid for Art's(whoever he is) sake.

firebird said...

It has to be a misunderstanding. Or as Howie Chizek used to say in the 1980's: It's A Communist Plot!!

emery_r said...

Guess that'll teach YOU for being mean to WOIO, huh?

How lame. They couldn't actually figure out that you'd be able to get around a "block" exactly as you did? To be honest, the word LAME doesn't even begin to describe their action...