Tweet-And-Run Reporting Results In Iced-Tea Tempest

It was one of those headlines crossing the transom yesterday that raised an eyebrow: A huff from the News, “Opponents of immigration law call for boycott of Arizona Iced Tea — but it is brewed in New York!,” that was above a 151-word news-of-the-dumb item on “misguided tea fans” who were airing their grievances online. Total number of quoted sources in the piece: Two. The source for both those quotes: Twitter. You can probably see where this is going!

The offending quotes, as quoted by the News:

“Dear Arizona: If you don’t change your immigration policy, I will have to stop drinking your enjoyable brand of iced tea,” Twittered Jody Beth in Los Angeles.

“It is the drink of fascists,” wrote Travis Nichols in Chicago.

Well, that second quote was a paraphrase (the full Tweet: “I think we should all also boycott Arizona Iced Tea because it is the drink of fascists”), but guess what: both were, in fact, jokes! Somewhat imperfect jokes, it is true — a friend once taught me that the best comedy is often the most precise comedy, and it is a lesson that I have found has rarely failed me — but the News reporter who wrote up this item failed to pick up both on the sarcastic tone and Twitter’s handy ability to communicate directly with people on the service. should they have questions. (And neither Twitterer is exactly drowning in followers! No offense meant to either, obviously — it just makes the story behind the story odder, you know?)

So the story got picked up by tons of churnalistic outlets whose commenters were more than happy to let their freak flags fly. (Some people even got more industrious than the reporter, sending classy @-replies to the yuksters.) And the company got all defensive about its Noo Yawk roots. And meanwhile, the story continued to live on all over the Internet, where it will never ever die because the half-life of bad information online is somewhere just short of forever.