Columnist Wades Through Some Steaming ‘Twitter Sewage’

Dick Polman (pictured), a columnist with the Philadelphia Inquirer, blogger for WHYY-FM and writing professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has shared a juicy excoriation of Twitter’s callous, partisan underbelly.

He notes that after the LA Times published a preliminary article overnight Sunday about some hit-and-run incidents in the San Gabriel Valley involving U.S. Secretary of Commerce John Bryson, the Twittersphere quickly reared its ugly head. With some right-leaning typists surmising the events were related to drunk driving:

Within minutes, the Twitter sewage began to flow. Twitching fingers cannot remain idle, lest someone else be first with the snark. So a theme quickly developed: Bryson’s driving was a stain on President Obama (of course!)…

It’s great that social media gives everyone the chance to weigh in on politics; at its best, it’s a democratizing tool. But at its worst, and all too frequently, it aids and abets the headlong rush to judgment. The Bryson case is exhibit A – because, by mid-morning in the east, some fresh reporting surfaced in the mainstream media. It turned out that Bryson had apparently crashed those cars because he had suffered a seizure. (He’s now on medical leave.)

Polman headlined his blog post “Before Facts Known,” which he took verbatim from a semi-apology posted by the Karl Rove site American Crossroads.

[Photo courtesy: @DickPolman1]