How Jake Tapper of ABC News Blocked Me On Twitter

Twitter, the social networking and microblogging service that once only had geeks, and technophiles as its users has recently been embraced by the political and media elites who have not wasted much time to make it part of their Washington diet. And unsurprisingly so as it, more than any other social network, enables the communication of thoughts (in 140 characters or less) and their easy broadcasting to the world.

Today you can find many politicians, and media personalities on Twitter; I personally follow Karl Rove, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill and up until he blocked me last week, Jake Tapper.

For those who don't know it, Jake Tapper is not exactly a nobody; he's the senior White House Correspondent for ABC News, he's got fairly read political news blog and he's got the reputation for being a tough journalist who's not afraid of asking smart, incisive questions. He's also been branded the bad boy of the White House press (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-4qEz1vea0) but after reading the rest of this post, I'm not sure you should agree.

It all happened the night of the state of the union address; I was checking Twitter and reading the conservative leaning drudgereport--a very influential news aggregation website--where I saw the following somewhat snide headlines in the upper left corner:

• Obama promises to save economy..
• Obama promises to cure cancer...
• Obama promises education for all through college...
• Obama promises to end war...
  

Thirty minutes later, Jake posted the following (http://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1248047479) stating that Obama's toughest opponent will be himself because of all the promises he'll have to fulfill.

I twittered back http://twitter.com/declercq/status/1248114120 suggesting he'd gotten his editorial content from Drudge. No doubt, this was a bit obnoxious but all in all very innocent. In any case since he wasn't following me (your homepage only displays the updates of those you follow), and since he'd previously ignored an earlier question I asked (how is seating assigned during a joint session of congress) I wasn't expecting a response so it came as a surprise to see I'd gotten on his radar http://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1248127775 .

Because I thought it clear I'd been implying he'd gotten inspired by what was on the drudgereport--something which is after all not uncommon in the political news world--I took his response to mean "How dare you make those allegations sir! We came to the same conclusion independently."

To shorten our exchange I wanted to acknowledge that my comment had been a bit of ribbing, that I understood that nothing might annoy a journalist as much as the suggestion that he's getting his editorial guidelines from someone else but that no harm was intended. I came up with this http://twitter.com/declercq/status/1248162198 remember, this all has to be in 140 characters are less, longer updates so there wasn't much wiggle room to express all of that.

Anyways he musn't have really liked that because soon after he went to my profile and went out of his way to block me. I definitely didn't expect him to be so thin-skinned, certainly not the something I'd expect from the "White House Bad Boy".

You could play devil's advocate and argue it was within his right to block me, and yes nothing illegal happened, but there is something awfully funny about such a high profile journalist silencing "critics", filtering feedback and in essence putting a muzzle on free speech. It also smacks of pettiness and arrogance. It is inconceivable to imagine Karl Rove, Al Gore, or Joe Trippi going out of their way to block someone, not only because they have better things to do but because it runs counter to the premise of twitter, which is broadcasting ideas, extending the reach of your thoughts.

As Twitter becomes embraced as a professional tool by politicians and news correspondents, it will be interesting to see if they shall retain the full discretionary use of their accounts or if as public figures their accounts will be viewed as a public right, something that everyone should have access to. Personally this whole episode has been very off-putting to me, and I won’t be visiting his blog anymore, and find better use of my time; like trying to break the meme density record for example.