When Did Twitter Become A Wire Service?

A prime example of what's wrong with journalism these days occurred last night on Twitter. Former Baywatch actress Donna D'Errico tweeted that 7th Heaven actor Stephen Collins had shot himself. D'Errico lives near Collins. It would have been a big story given that Collins is under investigation for child molestation that occurred 40 years ago, EXCEPT, it wasn't true. Collins wasn't even home.

That didn't stop TV stations in LA from feeding the speculation in some form or another.  Twitchy did a nice job of screen grabbing some of the ridiculousness.

Kudos to LAPD for 'schooling' the Media on checking facts, first. Check out the tweets from the PIO on Huffington Post.

Whatever happened to confirming? Verifying? Double-checking? Every reporter who became a 'lemming', should be fired and so should the bosses that allow Twitter to be used as a wire service.