The power of social media has recently been displayed with the “rags to riches” New York Knicks phenomenon Jeremy Lin. For those who may not follow the NBA as closely as other sports Jeremy Lin received no athletic scholarships out of high school and was undrafted out of college. The 2010 Harvard graduate recently joined the New York Knicks for the 2011-2012 season only to prove his greatness to the world and its doubters. He was recently promoted to the starting line up for the Knicks while leading the team to a winning streak. After his winning streak with the Knicks the new term “Linsanity” was developed for him and his prominence.
Due to his recent track of stardom, his name has been headlined in many news sources and social media outlets including ESPN. Due to the speed of social media and the ability to never hide from your mistakes the headline published by ESPN titled “Chink in the Armor” made trending topics and blew up social media outlets globally within 35 minutes. The writer responsible for publishing the headline on ESPN.com was fired immediately and ESPN Ancho Matt Bretos was suspended for 30 days after using the term on national television. The headline went up around 2:30 p.m and was taken down at 3:05 p.m. after the commotion it caused.
Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook blew up with shock toward the indecent and inappropriate headline issued by ESPN.com. Although the writer who published the headline claimed there was no racism toward the headline, there was no returning from a globally trending topic and huge mistake. Once you are guilty in the court of public opinion it becomes almost impossible to reverse.
The speed of social media has made it impossible for writers, editors and reporters to make mistakes. When mistakes are made it is usually known nationally within a matter of seconds even before the writer has caught it. For example, Erin Andrews used the wrong “your” in one of her tweets and was called out by multiple Twitter followers and fans after making this common mistake. “You are not perfect anymore” one tweet stated after her grammatical mistake. She quickly issued a tweet in reply to her fans and followers saying, “that is why spellcheck is important.” In today’s world of social media, speed and quickness is everything however, we cannot forget about double and triple checking our tweets and posts before pressing send because it is impossible to hide once we have made them.
