NBC Says It Was Twitter's Idea To Kick That NBC-Critical Journalist Off Twitter

Yesterday we were introduced to Guy Adams, the journalist whose Twitter account was suspended after he tweeted out the—already quite public and now very, very public—email address of an NBC exec. Adams was also using Twitter to shred NBC's coverage of the Olympics.

Doesn't NBC have better things to do than track down and silence its critics? Maybe so. According to a story in today's , the idea of suspending Adams' Twitter account came from Twitter itself. NBC told the Telegraph it was Twitter—the network's new corporate partner on Olympics coverage—that initially blew the whistle, leading NBC to file a complaint:

But in an email to The Daily Telegraph, Christopher McCloskey, NBC Sport's vice-president of communications, said Twitter had actually contacted the network's social media department to alert them to Mr Adams's tweets.

"Our social media dept was actually alerted to it by Twitter and then we filled out the form and submitted it," he wrote.

Well, how about that. NBC, tired of fielding all the criticism, went right ahead and tied Twitter right to the rails. And what does Twitter have to say about this? Absolutely nothing so far. All we've got is what a Twitter employee told Adams directly—quoting from the Twitter policy guide—and a Twitter PR person saying that this story here provides "good context." The headline in the story: "NBC Olympics Executive's Email Wasn't 'Widely Available' In Google."

But Twitter's policy says nothing about widely available. It says an email can't be private or personal. A business account by definition is not personal and considering NBC's email format is extremely easy to locate, it is most definitely not private.

So, come on Twitter. Fess up. Because now you're starting to look worse than NBC.

[Daily Telegraph]

UPDATE, 10:34 a.m.: Here's a bit more:

Which, woof. That's not what the question was. Did Twitter flag that particular Tweet or not. And then there's also this.

For a handy master schedule of every Olympic event, click here.