Opinion: #MSM reporter offers Obama #WhiteHouse helpful advice on #Twitter -- and they take it

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A New York Times reporter this morning offered White House communications folks an unsolicited tip on using Twitter to drive improved public support for President Obama’s stance in the debt ceiling negotiations.

And within minutes they took it.

As the Daily Caller’s Neil Munro relates, New York Times reporter Jen Preston, like millions of Americans, heard Obama’s remarks this morning urging citizens to phone, email and Tweet their support for the Democratic ‘compromise’ legislation in the stubborn budget talks with Republican members of Congress going on now for weeks.

Soon after, Preston tweeted two White House officials asking if they’re using a special #hashtag as Twitter users do to group messages of common interest. This White House has never been slow to use social media. Quickly, they came up with #compromise.

(UPDATE: Preston and Erik Wemple of the Washington Post have a totally different take here. ‘I wasn’t doing it to help the White House. I was doing it to help myself,’ Preston told Wemple. ‘I didn’t hear his address, and I was simply trying to find out what the hashtag was.’)

#oopswesaid

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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