Twitter Scooped NBC on Russert’s Death

In the world of broadcast news, it’s normally a given courtesy that, when a well known news personality dies, the station they worked for will be the first to break the news after the family has been notified. It’s one of the unwritten rules of journalism.

In the case of beloved NBC newsman Tim Russert, Twitter scooped the massive network on the big story.

Turns out that a minor lackey at the station heard the news and, assuming it was public knowledge, edited Russert’s Wikipedia page to reflect the death. Someone at the station caught it, which makes me wonder who they pay to watch Wikipedia, and changed it back some eleven minutes later.

Too late.

By the time they made the changes, the story was already out on Twitter.