How to Tweet Responsibly During a Breaking-News Event

[Commentary] Since Oct 29's tweeting on Hurricane Sandy, there's been a great debate in social-media circles over whether Twitter is self-correcting, or whether misinformation spread there and on other social-media platforms can then flood into the real world, outside the range of any pullback.

"What happens on Twitter doesn't stay on Twitter," warned Bloomberg's Jared Keller. Writing on GigaOM, Matthew Ingram had a contrary view, hailing Twitter as a "self-cleaning oven" for news. The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal got into the fact-checking business here on this site, knocking down fake Sandy photos and pondering ways to counter misinformation on the viral web. And Poynter's Craig Silverman even proposed that his organization and other groups should "work together to secure a grant and test whether a centralized, non-profit organization could act as a (mis)information clearinghouse during breaking news and other big events, as well as a source of best practices for knocking down misinformation." But I wonder almost if this is over-thinking the issue. "When we get mad at others for fooling us, we should also be mad at ourselves for fooling our readers," the Guardian's Heidi Moore wrote. She's right.