Twitter generates scoop on reshuffle
By Kim Tong-hyung
Either government insiders are using Twitter to break news or reporters are posting their scoops on Twitter before giving their employers the chance to print them. The fact is that Twitter, the globally popular social media service that is beginning to take hold in Korea, continues to beat traditional news organizations in the game of speed.
Tension was evident in newsrooms across the nation Sunday afternoon when President Lee Myung-bak decided to announce the reshuffle of his government team on live television at 2 p.m. The movements proved to be massive as Lee replaced seven Cabinet ministers in the run-up to making Kim Tae-ho, 48, the country’s youngest prime minister in nearly four decades.
Cheong Wa Dae was intent on tightly sealing the list of new Cabinet members ahead of the 2 p.m. news conference, even refusing to share the information with beat reporters before the embargo was lifted.
However, the suspense was killed after the names of Kim and other new ministers began to circulate in “tweets,” the short Twitter messages, more than an hour before the news conference.
The first tweet about the results of the reshuffle appeared around 12:40 p.m., breaking the news of Kim’s appointment as prime minister. About 20 minutes later, the same Twitter user managed to post an accurate list of the seven new ministers and other senior bureaucrats, which quickly spread over the Internet through his followers.
The presidential office apparently has no idea how the list was leaked and is concerned over the thought that a government employee might have had something to do with it. Or the Twitter user was perhaps a journalist, who obtained the information through a non-official route and succumbed to the urge to broadcast it on Twitter first.
There is also a possibility that Cheong Wa Dae officials may have failed to keep the information secret because they had to share it with the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) — the list of the new high-level bureaucrats include three incumbent GNP lawmakers.
The recent Twitter incident is expected to have the government consider more ways to monitor public employees and tighten its control in the dispersing of information, and there is already talk about banning Cheong Wa Dae employees from using smartphones. A Cabinet reshuffle leaked on Twitter is one thing, but the same thing happening to a critical Defense Ministry announcement would be quite another.
Twitter, which allows users to broadcast their real-time status in short messages to an indefinite number of computers and mobile devices, is proving to be a disruptive force in the traditional media market.
An increasing number of sources — including politicians, businessmen, entertainers and athletes — are using Twitter and other similar micro-blogging platforms, like Me2Day (www.me2day.net), to break news about themselves, and this has journalists worried about their weakened role as middlemen.
Just a year ago, Twitter was hardly a topic in the daily conversations of Koreans. However, with smartphones such as the Apple iPhone opening the era of the mobile Internet, Twitter and other social media services like Facebook (www.facebook.com) are enjoying growing popularity here.
A survey of smartphone users by job search site Job Korea (www.jobkorean.co.kr) showed that more than 80 percent of respondents were using Twitter on their handsets.
트위터 통해 내각개편 사전에 급속히 퍼져
정부 내부 관계자 및 기자들은 새로운 소식을 종이에 인쇄하기 전에 트위터에 먼저 올린다. 국제적으로 널리 쓰이는 트위터는 기존 언론사들에 비해 속도 경쟁에서 이점을 차지하며 한국에서도 자리를 잡기 시작했다.
이명박 대통령은 8일 오후 2시 내각개편 내용을 통해 김태호 (48) 전 경남지사를 총리로 내정했다.
그런데 기자회견 한 시간 전부터 김 내정자와 다른 장관내정자들의 이름이 트위터에 오르내렸다. 12:40분쯤 처음 김 총리내정자의 이름이 트위터에 올랐다. 20분 후 같은 사용자로부터 일곱 장관내정자들의 이름과 다른 내정자들의 이름이 올라왔다. 이는 인터넷에 급속히 퍼졌다.
청와대는 정보가 어떠한 경로로 누출 됐는지 전혀 모르고 있고 내부에서 새어나갔다고 생각할 수 있다. 비공식 루트를 통해 정보를 알아낸 기자의 소행일 수도 있다.
이 사건 이후 청와대 내에서 스마트폰 사용 금지에 대한 이야기가 나오고 있다. 트위터는 의사소통을 하는 social networking service로서, 스마트폰 도입 이후 엄청난 인기를 얻고 있다.