Scott's Team, Reporters In "Twitter War"
TALLAHASSEE (CBS4) - Fingers ablazin' at 140 characters or less in a message, Governor Rick Scott's communications director has taken to using Twitter to defend his boss against reports in the media.
Brian Burgess reportedly not only uses the social networking site to argue with and contradict reporters, he also uses it to criticize news sources. Shots have been fired back and forth in what one former reporter is calling a Twitter war between Burgess and the media.
Brian Crowley, a former political reporter who runs the Crowley Political Report blog, says arguments that used to take place over the phone are becoming public.
"What used to be a flurry of phone calls back and forth and maybe barging into people's offices has become a Twitter war and, often times, it's silly," said Crowley. "It's not a two-way conversation. It's a mob conversation."
For example, Orlando Sentinel reporter Aaron Deslatte tweeted a link to a story questioning job projections for a dredging project favored by Scott, who had previously killed a high-speed rail project. Burgess responded with a tweet saying, "jobs projected for port expansion no different than HSR, except the cost to taxpayers is $2,625,000,000 lower. #winning #duh". The #winning and #duh were references to Twitter hashtags popularized by actor Charlie Sheen.
In another instance when the St. Petersburg Times wrote an editorial criticizing Scott for fighting President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, Burgess tweeted a link and the message "Uber-lib St. Pete Times editors criticize FL leaders for avoiding disaster that is Massachusetts health care system."
Former Governor Jeb Bush's Communications Director, Alia Faraj, said while she prefers the old fashioned way of dealing with reporters over the phone, she doesn't think there's anything wrong with Burgess for using Twitter to defend Scott.
"It's sort of a two-way street. Reporters are using social media to get the word out even before a story is written," she said. "I can see the benefits of responding in a public setting to set the record straight if the story is in a public setting."
Burgess says Scott has told his team to branch out beyond traditional media in delivering a message and he's used that challenge to be experimental on Twitter. He said the tone of the tweets may be tweaked as they learn what works and what doesn't.
