Journalist’s Twitter Account Suspended For Sharing NBC Executive’s E-Mail Address

As we mentioned on Saturday, NBC is taking a lot of heat in the social media sphere for its refusal to air marquee events like swimming or gymnastics until its prime time broadcasts. Now one UK journalist’s attempts to get some sort of response from NBC’s many, many, many Twitter pages has led to his Twitter account being suspended.

Before his account was suspended, Guy Adams, L.A. Bureau Chief for The Independent fired off a host of criticisms, questions and zingers about the opening ceremonies. You can still see them on Topsy.com but here are a few choice cuts:

*Am I alone in wondering why NBColympics think its acceptable to pretend this road race is being broadcast live?

*According to NBC’s commentary team, the Surrey countryside is full of “chateaus”

*Matt Lauer: “Madagascar, a location indelibly associated with a couple of recent animated movies.” #tosspot

*America’s left coast forced to watch Olympic ceremony on SIX HOUR time delay. Disgusting money-grabbing by @NBColympics

*I have 1000 channels on my TV. Not one will be showing the Olympics opening ceremony live. Because NBC are utter, utter bastards.

And one of our favorites, in response to @NBColympics Tweet letting everyone know that “Muhammad Ali is one of the flag bearers,” Adams replied, “If only someone had invented a technology to help us actually see this. Oh, wait…”

But apparently it was the Tweeting of the e-mail address of an NBC executive Adams claims is responsible for the tape delay decision that got the writer’s account suspended.

“Your account has been suspended for posting an individual’s private information such as private email address, physical address, telephone number, or financial documents,” a support rep explained to Adams via e-mail.

To which he replied, in part:

I’m of course happy to abide by Twitter’s rules, now and forever. But I don’t see how I broke them in this case: I didn’t publish a private email address. Just a corporate one, which is widely available to anyone with access to Google, and is identical to one that all of the tens of thousands of NBC Universal employees share.

It’s no more “private” than the address I’m emailing you from right now.

Either way, quite worrying that NBC, whose parent company are an Olympic sponsor, are apparently trying (and, in this case, succeeding) in shutting down the Twitter accounts of journliasts who are critical of their Olympic coverage.

Am I to presume, for example, that they decided to complain about me because of my recent article in the Indy’s news page about their various failures?

This apparently did not work to get his account un-suspended. As of this writing, Adams’ page was still on forced hiatus.

Back in January, I used the Consumerist Twitter account to share then-Best Buy CEO Brian “Git r” Dunn’s e-mail address when he voluntarily announced it during a talk at the Consumer Electronics Show. Last I checked, we were never punished for doing so.

NBC’s No. 1 Tweeting Critic Has Been Suspended From Twitter [Deadspin.com]

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