This time last week I was attending a conference at Bond University on The Courts and the Media in the Digital Era (you can download the program here). I spoke about this conference on my radio segments with Andrew Bartlett and Spencer Howson during the week and you can also read my tweets from the conference here. The general consensus from the conference seemed to be that live, text-based communications from court were inevitable.
That said, I do think there is a general relunctance from the courts to embrace new communication technologies, such as Twitter, as as official channel of communication from the court. And this story from Brazil is only going to reinforce that attitude:
The @STF_Oficial Twitter account, the official account for the Brazilian Supreme Court, tweeted something rather embarrassing on Tuesday: it called for the resignation of the president of the Senate.
Now, this is not the sort of public statement to be taken lightly, nor is the way in which it was presented. The tweet apparently called for 80-year-old Jose Sarney to retire from the Senate, following the lead of soccer star Ronaldo who announced his retirement from the game on Monday.
In a statement issued today on its website, the Supreme Court apologized for the tweet. It claims that the Twitter account was improperly used by a court employee, and has since removed the offending tweet.
As the Associated Press reports, the Court has not identified the employee responsible for the tweet, nor indicated whether or not they had taken disciplinary measures against him or her.
Twitter is a public forum, but even the top Court in a country can forget this at times and post an improper tweet.
Read more here (from AllTwitter).
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