Tweets from a funeral?

I don’t doubt I’m going to receive some heat for this but here it goes.

Let me preface this by saying that The Hartford Courant has provided some of, if not the best, coverage of the Jasper Howard murder and the tributes and investigation that has followed.  From breaking the story early last Sunday morning to covering the various candlelight vigils on campus last week, I have applauded all of the Courant’s coverage of this unspeakable tragedy, until now.

Desmond Conner, Jeff Jacobs and the rest of the Courant staff have written moving tributes about Howard as both a player and an individual off the field.  When I learned that Conner was traveling to Miami to attend and cover the funeral I was not the least bit surprised.  Until I learned that he was going to be tweeting from the memorial service.  In total, Conner tweeted 40 times during the three-hour service, which also had a live video feed broadcast on the Internet.

Call me old fashioned, but I just don’t see a funeral as a proper place to be using Twitter to provide minute-by-minute updates of the actions of those in attendance.  I have no qualms about reporters attending funerals, especially if the one being memorialized is of importance to a community, as Howard was to UConn, but I feel the use of Twitter during a funeral is uncalled for.

A quick Google search brings up a 2008 case in Colorado when a reporter from the Rocky Mountain News tweeted the funeral of a 3-year-old boy who was killed when a pickup truck crashed into a Baskin Robbins ice cream shop in Aurora, Colo.  The reporter, Berny Morson was met with criticism for his actions from fellow reporters whose responses ranged from him venturing into “risky territory” to “downright despicable.” One reporter went so far as to compare it to a broadcast journalist performing a standup during the middle of a service.  This was September 2008, and Twitter has only grown since then.

I think part of the problem with situations such as these is that there are no steadfast rules as to how to approach the situation.  Conner’s tweets provided pertinent information such as who was in attendance, but with a live video feed available on the Internet were they necessary in the first place?  I wasn’t in attendance at the service but I believe Conner did everything in his power to keep his tweeting to appropriate times when it wouldn’t be distracting to the others at the memorial service.

While the tweets in the Rocky Mountain News case were much more graphic and disturbing, Conner used great discretion to make sure that none of the tweets themselves could be considered offensive, but as a fellow journalist I just find the entire process of tweeting during a funeral to be a massive grey area in terms of good taste.

With the way that social networking is rapidly expanding, I had never even heard of Twitter a year ago, these are the kind of issues that are going to become more and more in the forefront as technology advances.

These are just my two cents, not an attack on Conner or the Courant at all.  I have no doubt that their coverage of the funeral will be superb given the insight that their reporters had into Howard’s life after covering him for two-and-a-half years.

I would just like to raise the question: Where do we draw the line?  What is appropriate to tweet and what isn’t?  While journalists decades ago were dealing with issues such as cameras in the courtroom and televised executions, these are the questions we must ask ourselves as journalists in the rapidly advance technological age.