Biggest Critic Of NBC's Awful Olympic Coverage Has Twitter Account Suspended For Tweeting NBC Exec's Email
from the questionable... dept
One of the loudest critics of NBC Universal's awful Olympics coverage was Guy Adams, who certainly wasn't pulling any punches with his Olympics-related tweets. Either way he was a bit surprised to find his account suspended. When he sought to find out why, he discovered it was because he had tweeted the email address of Gary Zenkel, NBC's exec in charge of the Olympics coverage. Twitter claims that this was the revealing of "private information," in violation of Twitter's terms of service.Adams, quite rightly, found this to be odd, noting that Zenkel's corporate email address is not private at all. As Deadspin shows in the link above, Adams let Twitter's PR folks know it:
I'm of course happy to abide by Twitter's rules, now and forever. But I don't see how I broke them in this case: I didn't publish a private email address. Just a corporate one, which is widely available to anyone with access to Google, and is identical to one that all of the tens of thousands of NBC Universal employees share.Adams also wonders if the suspension happened because of complaints from NBC -- a Twitter partner in this Olympics coverage, remember -- who is upset about Adams' constant berating on Twitter as well as in the publication he writes for, The Independent. In fact, NBC has put out a statement confirming that it filed a complaint about Adams' Twitter account, though Twitter did not need to then suspend his account.
It's no more "private" than the address I'm emailing you from right now.
Either way, quite worrying that NBC, whose parent company are an Olympic sponsor, are apparently trying (and, in this case, succeeding) in shutting down the Twitter accounts of journliasts who are critical of their Olympic coverage.
And, of course, as tends to happen in these sorts of situations, Gary Zenkel's email address is now much more widely available because tons of press reports are including it.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: account suspended, criticism, email, gary zenkel, guy adams, private info, streisand effect, twitter
Companies: nbc universal, twitter
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Well, no one's perfect
Berners-Lee, of course, invented the web; an important piece of, but not the, internet.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Well, no one's perfect
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Well, no one's perfect
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Well, no one's perfect
(You just need to let that logical fallacy soak in a bit =P)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Well, no one's perfect
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Whom do you think makes the real laws?
It takes gobs of money.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I think if you have issues with that kind of good manners to users then you're looking way to hard to find problems with things.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
> having a standard rule for everyone and
> every situation when it comes to putting
> out email addresses, business or home.
But they don't. A few months ago, when Spike Lee tweeted the home address of George Zimmerman after the Trayvon shooting, Twitter didn't suspend Lee's account. And it was all the worse because Lee didn't even tweet the correct address and ended up victimizing some completely innocent people to the point where they had to flee their home for their own safety.
This is clearly a case of Twitter silencing a critic at the behest of NBC and they're just using the email address as a flimsy excuse for doing it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Rule for EVERYONE
Yet, when Spike Lee tweeted the (incorrect) address of George Zimmerman (in an attempt to get him lynched, I suppose) the didn't suspend his account.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Only in a very simplistic world (yours maybe?) does one rule cover all situations without causing stupid situations, like widely publicised email addresses being considered private.
"I think if you have issues with that kind of good manners to users then you're looking way to hard to find problems with things."
I think if you don't have an issue with NBC censoring a critical journalist then you're not looking hard enough.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Who would of thought it would be something as simple as Gary.zenkel@nbcuni.com
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Personal information?
This isn't a genuine complaint, this is NBC wanting this guy shut up.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Personal information?
Guess the same could be said about most media outlets. =P
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Personal information?
And apparently Twitter fell for it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Who cares?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Sadly they don't include McDonalds proprietary commercials.
/sarc
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Dear FSM ACOET got another one.....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Bad career move, the Internet is gonna eviscerate the copytard.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Words like that are the reasons why dickheads with Fawkes masks are hard to take seriously. Do you ever get out from behind the keyboard, or doesn't mommy not let you out after dark?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Jealous much?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Too bad, you are hiding behind an Anonymous Coward nom-de-plume.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I don't think they care about the email
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
come down to intent
Simple really,, he wanted to incite his followers to email this person, and incite them to spam, flood, or otherwise harass this person.
There is simply no other reason why someone would do that, unless he/she was looking for trouble..
I know, Masnick makes him out to be all innocent, and did not 'mean' anything by it, but perhaps he can explain WHY he would even do that ?
I hope they delete his account, and put him on a permanent ban..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: come down to intent
ALternatively, why would you post such a deliberately goading post here, knowing that all you'll do is provoke a frustrated / angry response?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Flop
The OIC can be blamed. Allowing NON Olympic events to enter the games, I'm talking about team sports such as basketball, soccer, tennis and such, bore people. We see enough of it during other times.
The Olympics is suppose to be for individual achievements not team sports.
Dump them all and get back to basics and then, maybe, the Olympics will survive. Follow the current trend and in 20 years it will be a non event, maybe sooner
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bankrupt NBC
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Start with individual tweets requested by Countries/Governments, making for a transparent, better, more useful service? Move on to accounts at request of corporation.
Does knowing twitter suspended an account make the service more useful?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
olympic coverage
[ link to this | view in chronology ]