21 March 2011

Twittergate as Barr blocks the Canberra Times

| johnboy
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andrew barr twitter feed screenshot

The Canberra Times is seething with indignation that the Minister for Planning and Education Andrew Barr has declined to let them follow his tweets,

At last check RiotACT was still allowed to benefit from Andrew’s tweet based announcements.

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georgesgenitals11:03 am 22 Mar 11

John Moulis said :

At long last Barr has done something I agree with. The more people who shun The Green Left Daily the better.

+1.

Thoroughly Smashed10:27 am 22 Mar 11

Some of you, CT especially, seem to be carrying on as if somebody’s died.

Twitter is a fad and I’d be surprised if Andrew Barr himself has any involvement with “his” feed.

And at the end of it nothing is preventing CT or anyone else from reading what has been written there. They can even subscribe by RSS if they’re that interested in what some politician’s staffer has to say in 140 characters or less.

Any public official that tries to hide public information (because, lets face it, that is what a twitter account is) is either trying to hide something or is not solid in his convictions.

He is a divisive figure who appears to have no respect for history, tradition or culture when it is anyway opposed to his personal views. He has consistently shown he can’t separate the ISSUE from the PERSON raising it.

This fiasco with the twitter account and the Canberra times just proves he is not fit to hold an elected position of any type until he grows up.

Descent into paranoia, traditionally the trademark of totalitarian dictators.

I-filed said :

Please don’t diss the Canberra Times.

The media market will decide the fate of the CT. I don’t bother even reading free copies and the web page is a joke.
Good on you Andrew, the CT is a waste of wood pulp.

jb said:

No one could possibly be as surprised as I am that they have an “online news team”.
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It would take one person maybe 20 minutes to put up the day’s content on what they laughingly call their website. 10 minutes if it was jb.

The story is hilarious, though. As if nobody on the CT staff could access this stuff on their personal account, and as if it is worth accessing anyway.

Certainly don’t want the press to get a hold of what you’re putting out there…

transparency..?

Please don’t diss the Canberra Times. It employs journalists – it (somehow) manages to cover international as well as national and local issues. There’s no excuse for anyone not knowing the pressures a mainstream news outlet is under. Much as I enjoy reading “town square” opinion sites, it’s important that journalists are still paid to research stories. How about supporting the Times in this stoush with Andrew “Feudal Delusions” Barr?

Mr Barr’s actions over the last few years have led me to conclude that he has some vastly complicated and overwhelmingly subtle plan that is beyond the comprehension of pretty much everybody in the ACT at the moment. This is just another piece in the puzzle.

The seeming erratic and random acts will, at some point in the distant future, all come together into a coherent thread, and all will be revealed. At that point, we’ll all be able to go “Ahhh…*now* I understand what that was all about”.

Until then, there’s really no point in anybody trying to make sense of anything he say or does.

At long last Barr has done something I agree with. The more people who shun The Green Left Daily the better.

I follow Andrew Barr and a few of the other pollies, but his tweets are the only ones worth reading. I can see why the CT is upset. They must be bored $#!*less with him gone from their feeds.

Swaggie said :

You’re losing the plot Andrew….

“The Smiling Assassin” never had the plot to begin with…

Surely if his news is good enough to make public, he can make it available to a “reputable” media outlet too… What a smug bastard he is…

Barr is turning into one of those Pollies who totally lose touch with reality from being seduced by concert promoters and wasting our money, to having a warped vision of what’s good for our kids and now thinking barring a “news” outlet from reading his tweets is a sign of how Macho he is. You’re losing the plot Andrew….

Online news team, to fill in the form that feeds their website? Same website as major newspapers as the Braidwood whatever it is?

what amazes me is that they are asking opinion through a poll as to whether he should block them access or not. Twitter is about choice. he chooses to block them. if this is in the public interest, I am very surprised. I am connected through twitter to Andrew Barr, and The canberra times twitter account already, but neither have written anything of particular interest recently.

No one could possibly be as surprised as I am that they have an “online news team”.

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