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Mon, Oct 11 2010 13:28:32

WaPo: Fla. pastor's Koran-burning threat started with a tweet

On 9-11, two WaPo reporters wrote: "On the afternoon of July 12, the Rev. Terry Jones fired off a series of messages on Twitter, decrying Islam as fascism and President Obama's support of a Kenyan constitution that would recognize sharia law and abortion. His final one for the day said this: 9/11/2010 Int Burn a Koran Day." The authors imply that this last tweet of the day was the first that called for International Burn A Koran Day.


  1. The reporters did not link to the tweets, identify the Twitter account name or even show a screen capture. Trust us, we're the professional press?

    I set out to try to track down the account and the tweets. I will sometimes use IBAKD and sometimes Burn A Koran Day as shorthand for the event, "International Burn A Koran Day." 

    I was disturbed to discover that many of the facts in the story, which was presented as a timeline of events, were incorrect. Moreover, the claim that these tweets came from Rev Jones rests on assumptions that the reporters do not articulate.

    In my search, I quickly found that [Rev. Terry Jones site:twitter.com] was not a useful string for finding a profile. 

    Eventually, I stumbled upon Fran Ingram (2FranRev5v13), "Member of Dove World Outreach Center." Bless her heart, for she had retweeted (using the new RT feature) and then replicated the tweet as an @ (for a reason I cannot fathom). She gave me what I needed: a Twitter account name, @iiotd.


  2. Note the date of the tweet: it's July 11, 2010. The WaPo says July 12. A minor detail, perhaps. But it's in the lede graph! 

    NewTwitter does not show timestamps, but old Twitter does (the Skitch image). It was tweeted at 1.21 pm.
  3. We do not know who is tweeting for this account, but the WaPo credits Jones with the tweets.

    The bio line is vague; the person tweeting may or may not be Jones: "We are members of Dove World Outreach Center, Gainesville, FL. Senior Pastor Dr Terry Jones." However, because the pattern matches that described in the WaPo lede, I believe that this is the account that they reference and credit to Jones as author. 

    Did the reporters interview Jones? Did he cop to authorship? There's nothing in the story that suggests the reporters actually talked to Jones.

    If the reporters made the judgement that Jones wrote the tweets based on the Twitter bio, then they should have articulated that assumption.

    But we do know this: on July 11, someone tweeted the announcement over and over and over again (Skitch screenshots) -- six repeats. 

  4. The second Tweet of July 12th was another announcement of the Burn A Koran Day. And the last tweet of July 12 was a IBAKD announcement, as the reporters wrote. 

    But that last tweet was the 9th announcement that day and the 16th, not first, time that it was tweeted. The WaPo article implies that the 16th iteration was the first tweet. Moreover, there was a call for IBAKD in the tweet that immediately preceded the criticism of President Obama that the authors highlight in their lede graph.

  5. The WaPo authors imply that Jones would later opportunistically tap into controversy over the "ground zero mosque" to get attention for his event. It's possible that he did. 

    However, whomever was tweeting for @iiotd first talked about the "ground zero mosque" on July 9. Was it controversial yet? I don't think so; Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Rudi Giuliani did not jumpstart that bandwagon until August.

    And two days earlier, on July 7, @iiofd had retweeted Fran's announcement of a Facebook page for the book, which had a launch announcement on Twitter the same day.

    However, Fran first told the world about the book the day before, on July 6. One day earlier, on July 5, church members kicked off the events surrounding the release of the book with a protest outside of the Islamic Center of Gainesville (Florida).

  6. According to MyFirstTweet, that book announcement was the first tweet on the @iiotd account, suggesting that all of the hoop-de-do-dah was an effort to raise awareness of the book. Reinforcing that scenario: TweetStats shows that the account had 366 tweets in July; dropped to 52 in August; and had only 13 in September.

  7. Next errors: 
    "Two days after Jones sent his tweet and started a Facebook group, an organization that monitors news about Islam rang the first alarm bell. EuroIslam.Info, a collection of news and analysis headed by a Harvard professor of divinity, picked up the Dove World mission statement -- "To bring to awareness to the dangers of Islam and that the Koran is leading people to hell" -- and posted it on its "Islamaphobia Observatory" section."

    EuroIslam.Info is a "dating site". The correct url is Euro-Islam.info.
  8. This appears to be the page referenced by the WaPo. The blurb references LogansWarning (an anti-Islam site), which wrote about the event on July 13; retrieve date on the blurb is July 14. The IIOTD Facebook group was announced on Twitter on July 7 and the IBAKD event and Facebook page were announced on July 11. 

    So the graph should read "Three days after @IIOTD sent the first tweet announcing the IBAKD Facebook group..."

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