Modern “Journalism” In America:
The perils of dashing off observations on the microblogging site were brought into sharp relief Monday when several overeager ABC News employees — including “Nightline” anchor Terry Moran — rushed to tweet that President Obama had called Kanye West a “jackass” for interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards on Monday.
The problem: Obama made the comment during off-the-record chatter as he was being miked for an interview with CNBC anchor John Harwood.
How exactly did ABC News get wind of it? The broadcast network’s Washington bureau shares a network fiber line with CNBC, and so ABC staffers in D.C. watching CNBC’s feed heard the exchange. What they didn’t hear, apparently, was the explicit agreement CNBC made with the White House that Obama’s chitchat was off the record.
The president weighing in on the biggest pop culture story of the day was too delicious to ignore. Soon, e-mails about Obama’s comment began circulating internally at ABC. Before news executives had determined whether the material was publishable, Moran and a handful of other ABC News staffers posted the remark on Twitter.
“Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at the VMAs when Taylor swift won,” Moran tweeted. [The offending tweet has since been deleted, but it lives forever on the Intertubes. — Ed.] “Now THAT’S presidential.”
So basically, ABC was “accidentally” listening in on an off-the-record interview with John Harwood of CNBC and, thinking they had just heard some juicy dirt to dump on the president with, rushed off to do the journalistic equivalent of tattling on him to the principal. Memo to Terry Moran — here’s what the dictionary has to say about the word “jackass:”
jackass — n.
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A male ass or donkey.
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A foolish or stupid person; a blockhead.
Example: Terry Moran was being a complete jackass in his tweet about President Obama’s comments on Kanye West.
Note that the definition is not labeled as “vulgar slang” the way words like “shit” or “fuck” are. Not that that matters to the jackasses at ABC.