A writer from the Akron Beacon-Journal wrote in response:
"Want to ban your players from using Twitter? Fine. Want to keep the coaches off it? That’s their prerogative. But attempt to tell a room of reporters from around the state when they’re allowed to report news and problems are sure to ensue."
It seems that none of the journalists used their Twitter accounts during that press conference.
Can the football coach or the university say when a reporter can or can't reveal information?
If you were a reporter at the press conference, would you have tweeted if there was relevant information to transmit?
By the way, Urban Meyer has been on the J1111 blog before, after he yelled at a reporter. Check out that story here.
(Image via Bleacher Report)
16 comments:
I feel like this guy just isn't a fan of Journalists. Why would a man specifically tell a room full of reporters not to tweet at all during the session? Was he trying to hold off any information from being shared till the end of meeting? This baffles me cause you should be allowed to tweet whats on your mind at any moment of the day... If i was a reporter in that room, the moment that his PR staff announced to the attending media that they were not allowed to tweet during the event, And that no twitter rule extends to every Urban Meyer press conference. I would've instantly posted a tweet. Not just to spread gossip about what Urban Meyer was saying, but simply to stress the fact that no one should be able to say when I'm allowed or when I can't post a tweet. It's absurd!
If I was a reporter in this situation, I would absolutely tweet. Who is this football coach to tell me not to do my job? If he doesn't want to disclose information, then don't but if I was there I would report on everything. Journalists are neutral parties so trying to control how they do their job and spread information is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. No person or team is going to stop me from doing my job.
But if you tweet, you might lose access to the team and/or coach. Can you make that stand alone?
What if one of your competitors says, "OK. I won't tweet." And then they are allowed continued access to the team/coach. Who will suffer then? You? Your readers/viewers?
Would you just tweet on principle? Won't your boss fire you for losing access to the beat that you cover?
- George
(the teacher, who would definitely be mad but would totally be passive aggressive about it)
I agree that the ban on tweeting is absurd. But let's try to understand Meyer's rationale. Meyer and his press secretary are incapable of keeping track of what is said about him and the team on tweeter. Imagine checking the tweeter of every reporter that went to the conference. He wants to know what is said about him so that he can rebut any statement he disagrees with. Print and web news outlets is what he prefers. As a reporter I will tweet the crap out of him and send him an email with a link for him to follow me. Who doesn't enjoy being yelled at because of being a pain in the ass?
1. How is tweeting different from live streaming?
2. Given the risk of being fired, I will tweet after the conference is over. He didn't say anything about not writing your thoughts on a notepad.
I definitely wouldn't tweet while I was there. But that restriction does strike me as odd. Why assemble a room full of reporters and give them information that you don't yet want public? I would tweet after I left about it. I wouldn't tweet during it to avoid not being invited in the future but I would tweet soon afterwards to kind of be in that gray area of 'is that okay?' so I could still show them- hey I'm a reporter, I report news so don't tell me not to. At least that way I'm not openly rude and branded as rude and uninvited next time but I still feel like I'm in control for the most part.
I don't necessarily agree with Meyer's restrictions, but I can see why it might seem appropriate to him. With Twitter, reporters can post something they just heard in an instant. They know this, and are more likely to have that sort of knee-jerk reaction to anything they hear and just "report" it, as opposed to hearing everything the coach says and forming an accurate story. The problem with this is that halfway through a press conference, they might not have the full story, leading to conflicts in stories from multiple sources. It isn't exactly fair, but I feel like this sort of thing could lead to more accurate reports, which is the most important thing. The public does want quick news, but they also want the correct news, not BS.
I agree with Andrew Sifari on this!
All I know is that if I was a reporter at any of his press conferences I wouldn't listen to his rule. With media being produced at such high speeds these days it only makes sense to report to your followers as soon as you know. I would definitely tweet the information provided as soon as I wanted. I don't believe that this coach or any has the right to tell someone else how to do their job.
This is insane! I am a huge football fan and i respect Coach Meyer, but this is out of control! He cannot control when/what people do outside of his team. If a journalist wants to tweet they should have all the power to!
I can understand not letting the players tweet. But the reporters? If you are holding a press conference, the information is going to go out in the public sooner or later. What's the hold up?
As much as people want to argue and say that it is not fair to ban reporters from tweeting, it obviously worked in this case. Public Relation staff are in charge of allowing press passes to media outlets so if these media outlets want to earn the privilege of gaining a press pass they must play by the PR rules. While this is complete unfair to the reporters themselves it is obviously effective due to the fact that no one tweeted at the press conference.
Well I get all litigious with regard to constitutional rights and everything. Ohio State accepts government money. That means the public has to have access to the institution. Essentially, the institution waved its right to privacy.
I would first tweet a link to the first amendment. They I would proceed normally, trying to resist the urge to just tweet something else for the fun of it. Inevitably I would tweet something.
The fallout better be nothing or a large institution and its highly overpaid coach will find themselves in court (if my newspaper fired me they would find themselves in court too). When you take action that negatively impacts someone else's livelihood you are liable. This is not fascist Italy where you dictate to the press and expel reporters who don't tow the propaganda line. If OSU wants privacy they can stop accepting Pell grants, stop processing Stafford loans on behalf of students, and refuse public funding for their stadiums and buildings.
This logic does not apply in the same manner to professional sports teams. Although if my life depended on it I could draw out a similar situation: All pro teams accept public funding in one way or another. But that probably would not justify locker room or press conference access.
What Meyer has done is effectively devalued the press conference. If you can't use the press conference to be the first to break news then who cares about the press conference? There is no point in being there anyway.
I think the no-Tweeting rule is a little much, especially since social media is such an important part of journalism these days. Sure, it wouldn't be a problem to wait to tweet after the press conference was over, but was there really the need to take it this far?
I do not agree with Urban Meyer's restrictions. I would not tweet during the event to avoid losing access to my team and the coach and to avoid being not invited in the future! But I would tweet about it after leaving the conference, because as a journalist and reporter, he cannot just tell me when to tweet and when not to. That is just crazy!
I would wait until after to tweet about the event but definitely not during. Connections are important and i would want to get invited to press conferences again. I would also be very mad if i was banned from tweeting information to my followers. It's my job to let people know what's going on. Restricting journalists from releasing information is very controversial and not good because a journlist's job is to release information and let the public know what is going on at all times of the day.
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