Professor Ewart responds to Twitter misrepresentation

A follow-up to our earlier post: Twitter class required in J-School … or not

Professor Ewart responded in the comment section of the Alltop “Holy Kaw” entry HERE:

Thanks Mike Ward for tracking the misreporting of the story about me using Twitter in a journalism class.

The original story was about journalism students in my news and politics class at Griffith University using Twitter as a tool for self-reflection. It forms a small part of the assessment in the course.

Those who read the SMH story thoroughly would realise that I was never interviewed by that newspaper, they picked the story up from an interview I did with Reuters.

The course in which my students are using Twitter is not a course on Twitter, it is just one of several assessment tools used in the course.

In interviews about this story I repeatedly mentioned that another university had used Twitter in a journalism course as part of the reporting of an election. An error occured in the re-reporting of the original story which made it appear that the whole course I teach is on using Twitter.

I am neither a social media professor nor some old guy! I am a 41-year-old woman, a former print journalist and am now a Senior Lecturer in Journalism – yet more errors in responses to the incorrect story.

San’s comments on this blog about me are defamatory – perhaps San needs to take a course to learn what defamation is and avoid it.

Mike Ward is correct when he suggests someone should have emailed me requesting clarification of the story – but nobody did and the incorrect claims remain uncorrected by those who made them. As David McGraw says Twitter is useful as a teaching tool for headline writing.

It is also a tool for teaching one of the mainstays of journalism: Keeping It Short and Simple.

But the real issue here is that those who misreported my story should now correct the record and they should have sought a response before running off at the keyboard.

To misappropriate a phrase, this is a “teachable moment.”  The Alltop entry is one day old, with 6,219 views and 402 re-tweets.

It took me about 10 minutes to find Professor Ewart’s contact information.

You cannot return a missile that has been fired.  I guess “fact checking” is not a part of citizen journalism.

Mike “FossilMedic” Ward

Added: Professor Ewart posted additional comments on the Holy Kaw entry.

We sent a twitter message to Noelle Chun who made the Alltop post with the remark that she is “a journalism school graduate.” On her work Twitter account @Alltop_noelle, she posts “I’m a curator/evangelist for Alltop, your online magazine rack. ”