Spying on media spats

Just in this week.... Media People Often Don't Get Along. (The shock, the horror). There has been a lot of sand flinging around the media sandbox over the past few days and Twitter is your best window into the drama, if you follow the right people, that is.

Last week, a UK journalist called a US social media 'guru' and journalist a 'douchebag' for something he said at the SXSW conference. Do I know what he said? No, but I found it interesting that the journalist in question felt so offended by his presentation that he was obliged to bring it up on such a public forum as Twitter. And it was also interesting to see how the US journalist reacted, also on Twitter.

Less than a day later, a 'big' UK tech correspondent publicly complained about his team missing the Google Streetview story in his absence. Again, surprising to see Twitter naming and shaming going on.

And in the final media spat I've witnessed in the past couple of days, ZDnet publicly 'cleared up' some gross misrepresentations of a blog post committed by some (unnamed) US PR agencies. You've got to read this one for yourself.

I purposely haven't linked to these Tweets because my point isn't to call more attention to the spats, most of which were pretty minor anyway. But my point is to raise the issue that Twitter makes the sometimes love-to-hate relationship in the media sector front and centre for all to see. We've always had these spats, it's just that Twitter makes them more open.