In his latest The Media Equation column, The New York Times' David Carr notes the problem of the "burped up" thought that is Twitter, particularly when it intersects with professional expectations.

Carr cites the recent suspension of CNN's Roland Martin following a Tweet during last week's Super Bowl. Carr writes a thoughtful and self-deprecating look at the challenge of using social media when his employer has high standards. The instant judgment isn't always congruent with the overall judgment.

He concludes that 140 characters makes it difficult to be journalistic, even if it is fun and even if is a requirement.

With a U.S. election looming, Twitter has created a new hub to train journalists on best practices to use the microblogging service.

The @TwitterforNews account shares, in 140 characters or less, tips for journalists. But the hub, Twitter for Newsrooms, is a more thorough guide to researching, reporting, engaging, networking and maintaining security.

"We want to make our tools easier to use so you can focus on your job: finding sources, verifying facts, publishing stories, promoting your work and yourself—and doing all of it faster and faster all the time," the service says on the site.

For nearly two decades of Canadian elections now, it has been evident that technology has overtaken the law in how results are permitted to be transmitted.

The Elections Act does not permit results to be broadcast in any time zone before polls have closed. The reasoning is that Canadians should not be influenced by the results from a time zone whose polls have closed and where results can be gleaned.

Of course, that was a more enforceable matter when there was not an Internet; only Canadians who were phoning across the country could share results. But once the Internet surfaced, people could email and non-Canadian sites could publish results.

Efforts were made to suppress those results and crack down on bloggers and others who transmitted results. The biggest losers were the television networks, which had to run pre-game-type programming until local polls closed, then join the national broadcast in progress. In the west, it often meant joining a telecast with an overall outcome long since resolved.

On Friday it was made clear the law will change by the next federal election. Given that there are staggered polling hours that mitigate  closing times, there shouldn't be much of an influence from east to west. And all of the technological workaround and crackdown will be a thing of the past.

An interesting touch: The federal minister who announced the change Tweeted out the announcement.

Associated Press has amended its social media guidelines to be clearer about the responsibilities inherent in redistributing another account's Tweets.

The news agency says its staff should not ReTweet in a way that makes it appear they are expressing an opinion or support. And a disclaimer that the ReTweets are not their own views does not suffice, AP says.

It is telling staff to avoid the unadorned ReTweet. It argues that implies support. This is in line with many other organizations that view ReTweets as little different than expressions of opinion.

The ground is still fresh on defining and enforcing the legal consequences of posting or hosting contentious material on social media. Litigious parties haven't pursued many cases into the courts yet.

Poynter's Mallary Jean Tenore contributes an overview for U.S. journalists that bears reading by others, too. In it she cites the boundaries emerging in the courts on how libel can and can't be pursued.

While it is true that a libel is a libel wherever it is published, there are some protections worth noting: Third-party content can be hosted or reTweeted seemingly without consequence (although any libellous material you insert will have an impact on you).

Another variation: A news organization employee's Tweets might not be problematic for the organization if they are not work-related (the employee, of course, would have a problem).

A new study of how U.S. business journalists use the Internet has some interesting implications for those who evaluate its impact on standards. It's clear that the journalistic use is primarily information-gathering.

The study for the Arketi Group asked business journalists (it isn't clear in the study how many) how they use the Internet. Not surprisingly, 98 per cent said they use it to read news, while 91 per cent use it for sources and ideas. Industry experts, interested parties and corporate websites are the most frequently used sources.

Slightly more than two-thirds (69%) use the Internet for social networking. Journalists are more likely to have Linkedin accounts (92%) than Facebook (85%) or Twitter (84%) accounts.

As for their own creating, a little more than half (53%) blog. Other top uses include consuming webinars, YouTube and Wikis, producing and listening to podcasts and social bookmarking.

Earlier today, a Twitter hoax spread that CNN host Piers Morgan had been suspended pending an investigation of his involvement in the phone-hacking scandal. Some journalists reTweeted before one journalist determined the information was untrue. (Martin Bryant of TheNextWeb chronicles the episode.)

Reuters blogger Felix Salmon says this should not be a cause for deep concern. Twitter is the "new newsroom," he writes, where people can raise rumours and have them shot down, "no harm no foul." Just as journalists pass around gossip in a newsroom, he says Twitter can serve as a similar environment.

Salmon believes that the big accounts of organizations ought to be held to higher standards. "But for the rest of us, we’re conversing on Twitter just like we converse in real life," he says.

"People are human, they believe rumours, make mistakes, jump to conclusions. Twitter is just a healthy reminder of that fact," he concludes.

What do you think?

The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) has issued a report on best practices involving social media in newsrooms.

It canvassed a variety of organizations (all but two of them U.S.-based) and developed a roster of items largely reflective of them. Most of these elements are in effect in most newsrooms today.

One interesting finding, and not necessarily a reflection of many newsrooms, is the recommendation that news be broken on a website, not on Twitter

The executive summary of the report identifies 10 key takeaways:

1. Traditional ethics rules still apply online.
2. Assume everything you write online will become public.
3. Use social media to engage with readers, but professionally.
4. Break news on your website, not on Twitter.
5. Beware of perceptions.
6. Independently authenticate anything found on a social networking site.
7. Always identify yourself as a journalist.
8. Social networks are tools not toys.
9. Be transparent and admit when you’re wrong online.
10. Keep internal deliberations confidential.

What do you think of its summary?

The recent use of social media to propel political activism does not come dilemma-free. Sites with cultures of neutrality and accommodation are finding themselves in quandaries about their approaches.

The New York Times explores how they are wrestling with this content and trying to preserve the integrity of the cultures that first made them attractive. It looks at Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, in particular.

The pressure is coming from all sides: from those who feel misrepresentation is viral and those who feel more anonymity is necessary to protect those speaking out.

Ultimately there are bound to be legal questions about the publishing responsibility.

New York University's Jay Rosen never fails to be instructive, but his latest lesson is an intriguing exercise in self-criticism.

Rosen sent an errant Tweet this week on seeming corporate pressure involving a subsdiary of AOL --- what he calls "a serious error" --- and he has not only corrected the 140-character mistake but provided an extensive chronology of its pathology.

Before Rosen could correct, his Tweet had spread to a six-figure audience. He found undoing the mess problematic, in particular the weight of making a mistake with his professional credentials behind him.

His case study of his foul-up is an excellent example, though, of how to thoroughly explain how a mistake was made and his thinking along the way. Rosen has Tweeted 15,000 times, but this acknowledgment does nothing to take away from the contribution he has made. If anything, it enhances it.