July 30, 2012

Twitter Suspends Journalist Critical of NBC: The British journalist Guy Adams, a Los Angeles-based correspondent for The Independent, had his Twitter account suspended after he posted a series of scathing messages about NBC's Olympics coverage and encouraged his followers to email network Olympics executive Gary Zenkel. An NBC spokesperson said, "We filed a complaint with Twitter because a user tweeted the personal information of one of our executives." Adams posted Zenkel's corporate email address.

posted by rcade to Olympics at 05:21 PM - 10 comments

Hey, Corporations are people too! Insulting them makes them cry!

posted by apoch at 05:25 PM on July 30, 2012

NBC deserves all the criticism they get. I'm looking forward to after 2020 when another network gets the Olympics.

posted by insomnyuk at 05:39 PM on July 30, 2012

A corporate email address following a well-defined scheme is borderline on "personal information". Anyway, Twitter probably has a red phone to deal with complaints from its official media partner.

posted by etagloh at 06:12 PM on July 30, 2012

I would not call "corporate" personal. I highly doubt he would be permitted, or want, to receive emails from family and friends on his corporate account.

(Is there a way to delete this one?)

posted by jjzucal at 07:20 PM on July 30, 2012

Just checked Twitter ... the reaction from journalists and bloggers is heavy against Twitter.

I would not call "corporate" personal. I highly doubt he would be permitted, or want, to receive emails from family and friends on his corporate account.

posted by jjzucal at 07:24 PM on July 30, 2012

I highly doubt he would be permitted, or want, to receive emails from family and friends on his corporate account.

This is about the company he works for, not his favorite recipe for pickles. A corporate email dealing with corporate matters is not sensitive, personal information. The fact it's not the way the company wants you to interact with them (nameless, faceless accounts to nowhere that receive stock responses) doesn't make it personal information.

posted by dfleming at 07:25 PM on July 30, 2012

Not remotely personal. This decision is for the birds.

posted by rcade at 09:40 PM on July 30, 2012

I dunno -- Adams posted his email change with Twitter on Deadspin and in it, either he or the folks at Deadspin redacted his email address, even though it was exactly the same style as the NBC exec.

So which is it, private or public?

posted by wfrazerjr at 10:38 PM on July 30, 2012

Redacting an email address when reprinting an email is a different situation. Most people do that as a simple courtesy.

It is not uncommon to urge people to let their feelings be known to a company by sharing the corporate email address of management.

posted by rcade at 11:12 AM on July 31, 2012

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