BBC admits it made mistakes using Mumbai Twitter coverage

According to The Guardian, there has been a mixed reaction to the BBC's use of live reports from micro-blogging service Twitter in its coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks.

BBC News website editor Steve Herrmann has added his thoughts to the debate, including an admission that the corporation will need to take more care in how it uses lightening fast, unsubstantiated citizen posts from Twitter in the future.

He raises a specific failing – regarding the widely-reported tweet that the Indian government called for an end to Twitter updates from Mumbai – which the BBC covered in a "live updates" aggregation page.

"Should we have checked this before reporting it? Made it clearer that we hadn't? we certainly would have done if we'd wanted to include it in our news stories (we didn't) or to carry it without attribution," Herrmann says. "But should we have tried to check it and then reported back later, if only to say that we hadn't found any confirmation? I think in this case we should have, and we've learned a lesson."

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emily | 9:37 AM | Twitter |
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