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News & ArtsTuesday, December 29, 2009
City / Teh Internets The Curious Case of 107.7 The End's Twitter Feed
Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 11:02 AM
As Dan wrote last night, 107.7 The End started putting out Twitter posts in favor of religious profiling on airlines. This is the one that got all the attention:
Not all Muslims are terrorists—but nearly all terrorists are Muslims. Time to accept profiling America.
This morning, The End's Twitter feed reads:
We abhor last nights twitter hacking. The End brand in no way condones the comments and apologizes. Pswrd & security measures changed.
and every one of the posts from last night have been deleted. Luckily, I saved almost all of them—they're below the jump if you're catching up late to this.
But there are several questions, such as: Why was this "hacker" allowed to post for nearly 4 days? The first post was on Christmas day, and it reads:
A Nigerian tries to blow up NW flight on Xmas Day over Detroit. Hey TSA: focus please & profile those passengers on US watch list!
3:23 PM Dec 25th from Tweetie
Also interesting is that the hacked post came from Twitter posting client Tweetie. 107.7 posts tended to come from both ping.fm and Tweetie in the past, suggesting that more than one person had access to the account. Surely, The End pays someone to keep track of their Twitter feed, and The End received dozens of posts condemning the station over the course of last evening (many of which are below the jump, but you can also find a timeline of Twitter posts referencing The End here) and the station only deleted the profiling posts at 5 am this morning. It's true that businesses are often negligent at Christmastime, but The End posts frequently on days, nights, and weekends. In short: This claim of being hacked needs a lot more elaboration before it makes sense.
I have a call and an e-mail out to Mike Kaplan, the Program Director at The End's owner Entercom, in the hopes that he can explain the four-day hacking of The End's Twitter account. I'll let you know when he gets back to me.
Then the backpedaling starts:
And here are some of the responses, from last night:
1
Thanks for following this, Paul. I totally share your suspicion about The End's "hacked" claim. Really liking your recent posts.
2
How many tweets would it take to list all 550,000 people on the international watchlist this guy was on? (He wasn't on the shorter 400,000 person US watch list, nor on any other US list.)
3
um, could the 4 days have to do with the long holiday weekend... I know I didn't look at ANYTHING related to work for four days
4
Historically, the "media" has had distinguishable sections: bylines for news gatherers, opinion pieces clearly labled as such, and editorials that spoke on behalf of the entity. What exactly is a Tweet? Does it "speak" on behalf of the entity? I don't think we should excoriate The End because some lunkhead in charge of a ridiculous temporary technology feed uses his/her thumbs to say something stupid. I say let it pass - it was an interesting diversion for the Slog-ettes to gum over for awhile. And stand as a lesson on new technology biting a company in the ass. (I also question the "hacking" defense, but don't really care one way or the other - still stupid.)
5
it's andy harms from the end. ugh. what a nightmare. our PD should be trying to get in touch with you right now about the hacking of our twitter account.
9
I love you too, Baconcat.
I'll bet The End does NOT pay someone to watch their Twitter account; I'll bet they have an intern do it. Especially in radio, where you've got interns clambering the walls to get some music biz grooviness cred (an imaginary substance, but many still believe its real). I'll bet until today no one at the station earning more than $7,000 a year was even aware they HAD a Twitter account, or had spent ten seconds thinking about the implications of messages going out with their corporate brand on them and no oversight.
Imagine if someone had sent out a pile of their letterhead with this crap on it. Old school execs would have paid a lot more attention, even though the impact would have been a lot less.
I'm guessing this anonymous intern, whose job description reads something like "post this crap from these press releases about our promotions this guy sends you" got confused about his status in the universe and started channeling Glenn Beck instead. I'll bet that intern is sitting at home today, writing on his blog about freedom of speech and the liburul conspiracy to silence truth with PC, and planning to avoid telling mom and dad he's not a "DJ" anymore. And they'll be paying a lot more attention to their tweets from now on.
I'll bet The End does NOT pay someone to watch their Twitter account; I'll bet they have an intern do it. Especially in radio, where you've got interns clambering the walls to get some music biz grooviness cred (an imaginary substance, but many still believe its real). I'll bet until today no one at the station earning more than $7,000 a year was even aware they HAD a Twitter account, or had spent ten seconds thinking about the implications of messages going out with their corporate brand on them and no oversight.
Imagine if someone had sent out a pile of their letterhead with this crap on it. Old school execs would have paid a lot more attention, even though the impact would have been a lot less.
I'm guessing this anonymous intern, whose job description reads something like "post this crap from these press releases about our promotions this guy sends you" got confused about his status in the universe and started channeling Glenn Beck instead. I'll bet that intern is sitting at home today, writing on his blog about freedom of speech and the liburul conspiracy to silence truth with PC, and planning to avoid telling mom and dad he's not a "DJ" anymore. And they'll be paying a lot more attention to their tweets from now on.
12
If it had been KISW's Twitter feed, would anyone notice or be outraged? Hell, they'd probably increase their listenership.
13
@11: OMG you guys, it's RPattz. You're looking extra-pale today, RPattz! Is it for your role?
@9: "Yeah, you know me, I'm totally the Director Of Public Communication at The End. Yeah, I tweet for them sometimes, so you should totally add me-- it's at-symbol... oh, no, no, I'm not trying to get into your pants. I'm a romantic. I promise."
@9: "Yeah, you know me, I'm totally the Director Of Public Communication at The End. Yeah, I tweet for them sometimes, so you should totally add me-- it's at-symbol... oh, no, no, I'm not trying to get into your pants. I'm a romantic. I promise."
14
I have a radio DJ friend (used to work at one of the big stations here, now works at an even bigger one in Atlanta), and she has access to their account along with all the other DJs and probably more people than that.
Maybe The End's account was hacked, sure, but I bet a lot of people internally have access and Fnarf's theory seems quite plausible to me.
Maybe The End's account was hacked, sure, but I bet a lot of people internally have access and Fnarf's theory seems quite plausible to me.
15
No repercussions or big apology will come from this, nor answers. Malfeasance, laziness, and the freedom to do wrong.
18
i can elaborate. the end lied. they let a stupid intern or dj think they were being witty and or provacative and they got caught. just admit it, management is too stupid to know how to use twitter and turned it over to the kids since obviously only the kids use it.
19
I don't know where else to complain about this, so I'll do it here. The Stranger's twitter feed is fucking retarded. I thought it'd be cool to get updates on interesting stories or little blips from the stranger staff, but instead it's done by a make believe friend who hates everything good about the stranger. Yeah, I get it, it's satire. But it's not funny and it's not informative, and I fucking hate it. If The Stranger were to do an ACTUAL twitter feed I'd be stoked about it, though.
20
I agree that Fnarf is right on the money, but what I don't get is why The End doesn't just point the finger at this one intern, employee, whatever. I think it looks a lot worse to claim that your account was hacked (and you didn't notice for four days) than to admit that one person is responsible and has since been shitcanned.
21
Gee, I remember listening to KEXP "Street Sounds" a while back and the DJ began prasing Louis Farrakkhan. Why wasn't the Stranger on that? If the END had a DJ that was praising the KKK no doubt they would. Black anti-semitism/homophobia/mysogyny gets a free pass while we all have to get up in arms if an arab, african, or muslim is dissed.
23
@20, the thing is, interns turn over constantly, and if they never change the password -- and they can't change the password every time an intern leaves, they'd have to hire a staff member just to keep track of them and come up with new ones and get the word out to the dozens who hit it and tell them what it is again when they forget. There were probably fifty former interns floating around out there with the password. At least one of them is going to be a nut, or hold a grudge, or both.
24
Can't say I really disagree with fnarf - hacking does seem unlikely, especially given what they put out. Now, not being willing to publicly shame someone (or not having figured it out yet, there's probably a half dozen to dozen people, minimum who can post to this) I can understand.
26
or maybe "hacked" is just the term that the end's corporate management understands this to be. as in, "someone who didn't have corporate authorization to post, yet had access to be able to post." so they are considered a "hacker".
i think @fnarf is likely close to the truth of what happened. someone, likely a past employee/intern, logged in using a password that's probably not changed since the account was set-up. this shitstorm blew up and suddenly 107.7 is realizing they had poor control over their twitter account (which they've admitted); end of story. maybe they'll spend the money to hire a social media manager thereby stimulating the economy with the opening of a new job for someone.
i think @fnarf is likely close to the truth of what happened. someone, likely a past employee/intern, logged in using a password that's probably not changed since the account was set-up. this shitstorm blew up and suddenly 107.7 is realizing they had poor control over their twitter account (which they've admitted); end of story. maybe they'll spend the money to hire a social media manager thereby stimulating the economy with the opening of a new job for someone.
27
@26 - I think that's nail on head. People who don't, or poorly, understand these things tend to use the wrong terms. Ask my mom what's wrong with the computer and she gives a different description (the internet isn't working) than the actual problem (she uses a shitty browser, and it froze). A bit troubling that this might be the case of the station's manager/chief director/whatever Kaplan is, but very possible. Or, just cya and not blame the person who did it. Either seems likely
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