Upon Further Review…Not Such A Great Idea

The Washington Post Ombudsman weighs in on that paper’s decision to suspend sportswriter Mike Wise for a month. What did Wise do to earn the forced vacation? He sent out a fake Twitter tweet saying that NFL quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s then six game suspension had been reduced to five games. The story, and Wise’s “source” were completely made up. Wise said he did the stunt as an experiment to show how quickly bad information makes its way around the Internet. I guess the experiment “worked” – the story got out there for sure. The bad news is, it go out there so much, Wise got caught. Ironically, right about the time Wise got the one month suspension, Roethlisberger’s suspension got reduced to 4 games. Wise would be, um, wise, to not repeat the experiment. The Internet has enough junk on it as is. But if he really wants to try it again, maybe he should use an obviously untrue fact. Like “Ben Roethlisberger has class.” Just a thought.