As it’s so easy to tweet a newsworthy message out almost as soon as you hear the news, that can sometimes result in jumping the gun somewhat. It seems that happened in Germany this week when MPs leaked news for the president’s re-election.
It seems the news was published on Twitter a good fifteen minutes before the official election result was announced. Fifteen minutes is a long time in Twitter time, news can spread very quickly on Twitter.
“Twittergate” is now going to be investigated by the parliament as it broke decades of tradition. It’s not clear whether they actually broke any laws by leaking the news. In any case, I wonder what they can do about it? The vice–president of the house has said they can’t ban tweeting in parliament. However, I’d say MPs may not be so quick to tweet election results after this particular incident, given all the the fallout.
