JOUR107.1001//James L’Angelle//@eyelessoncampus//University of Nevada, Reno
04 April 2020
Lab 009: Social Media Burnout
(1) Follow professionals:
LIST: “COVID-19”
https://twitter.com/i/lists/1246151073456205830
Jennifer Jacobs,
@JenniferJJacobs, senior White House reporter for Bloomberg News
Kristen Welker,
@kwelkernbc, NBC News White House Correspondent.
George Stepanopoulos,
@GStephanopolous, ABC Good Morning America anchor
Jonathon Karl,
@jonkarl, ABC White House correspondent
Major Garrett,
@MajorCBS, Washington correspondent, CBS News
Reviewing Jennifer Jacobs’ posts related to the White House news briefing today, she did seem a bit more concerned with some off-topic material surrounding the virus updates such as;
“One for the history books. “I want to come way under the models. The professionals did the models. I was never involved in a model. But—at least this kind of a model,” and;
“Trump grew impatient as Birx talked about waiting til ‘we get through all this’ before we ask questions about what we could’ve done better as global community.”
Kristen Welker had no posts regarding the briefing today and retweeted a Soldedad O’Brien tweet on shelter-in-place while broadcasting. Her latest post was on the role of VP Pence leading the task force, linked to an NBC article.
George Stephanopoulos, ABC-GMA anchor is very weak on Twitter posting, having done so just four times in March and April.
Jonathon Karl was very vocal in the White House briefing today, with focus on questions as to why Jared Kushner referred to the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) as “our stockpile,” a characterization that created a stir in the press corps. They mainly wondered what Kushner was doing there in the first place and Karl received less wrath from the President than others who directed the same question at him. In a late post this afternoon, Karl was on his game;
“Asked if he could assure New York if ‘they're going to have the ventilators that they're going to need,’ Pres. Trump tells @jonkarl, ‘No, they should have had more ventilators at the time. ‘."
Karl knows which questions to ask and for that matter, wasn’t limited in the briefing today to just two questions, the President returned to him at least once. Late news coming out of New York is that the governor will literally confiscate unused ventilators from “upstate.” (French, Politico)
Within the hour (17:00 PDT) Major Garrett has retweeted a Tony Valentino, @tony561, post regarding Garrett’s podcast “Debriefing the Briefing,” reported by Joe Concha at The Hill as;
“CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett has launched a new podcast, “Debriefing the Briefing," which will focus on the White House coronavirus task force briefings.” (Concha,The Hill)
Although at least one of the COVID-19 list appears weak on Twitter, Stephanopoulos is a critical part of the ABC news team and usually appears anchoring the daily White House briefings from the network’s New York studio.
Sources
French, Marie J.,
National Guard to seize ventilators, https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/04/03/cuomo-plans-to-use-national-guard-to-seize-ventilators-from-upstate-facilities-1271376
Concha, J.,
Garrett launches new coronavirus podcast
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/491086-cbs-news-correspondent-major-garrett-launches-new-coronavirus-podcast
(2) Identify the people, hashtags and search terms relevant to the story
It is safe to say the entire world has comments about the virus pandemic sweeping the globe. It is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff as someone in authority or considered “reputable” may give misleading information that creates so much controversy in the news that reporters have trouble staying on topic. One has to read through hundreds of news stories and social media posts to gain insight as to the status of the subject. In addition, the Twitter hashtags change rapidly, some trend so fast that a great deal of valuable information drops off the radar faster than it can be picked up. The usefulness of social media becomes questionable as reliable with these kinds of limiting parameters.
News search sources, Google in particular, offer stories that can fall behind significantly where “yesterday” is already last year’s news. A good example is from above, while the ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl fielded questions today at the White House briefing on the New York’s governor’s request for ventilators, the governor had issued an order that the National Guard go “upstate” and literally confiscate unused ventilators from hospitals not seriously impacted by the surge.
Twitter, still, is the go-to source at least for an abbreviated “lead” on what’s trending and hopefully, it will point in a direction that was overlooked.
Hashtags: Trending related to the virus include #COVID19, #COVID19Pandemic, and similar ones that include at least the first few characters, when typed in, will give the related string of currently trending hashtags.
Even then, it is better to ferret out the stories individually, such as the recent one regarding the outbreak of the virus on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, currently anchored and quarantined in Guam. So many of the reports coming out were Associated Press duplicates, triplicates and beyond, it almost seemed like reading censored propaganda. To get to the root of the story, it proved valuable to search Google for “Guam newspapers.” There it was discovered through the local press locations of the quarantined hotels, rules in place for the sailors where the local beaches were off limits and the means used to transport them away from the ship. (Pan Pacific Press)
Sources
#COVID-19 GUAM--The USS Roosevelt Evac--SCUTTLEBUTT, https://panpacificpress.blogspot.com/2020/04/covid-19-guam-uss-roosevelt-evac.html
Image of sailor-transport, https://www.postguam.com/news/local/covid-19-cases-climb-to-82/article_163f0004-74d7-11ea-a98a-afd68ef77887.html
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/covid-19-cases-climb-to-82/article_163f0004-74d7-11ea-a98a-afd68ef77887.html
JOUR107.1001//James L’Angelle//@eyelessoncampus//University of Nevada, Reno