The Post published a story earlier this week about parody Twitter account @OUGreek as part of our “Social Tuesdays” series, which profiles area social media accounts and their moderators.
Through a Twitter conversation with a Post reporter, its moderator claimed to be an OU student in a sorority. She said she would only speak to The Post on a condition of anonymity.
As we later found out, she isn’t an OU student at all. The account has since been deleted.
Needless to say, we got duped.
The woman who used to moderate @OUGreek is apparently working as a social media intern for ClusterFlunk, a self-described “social platform that makes it easy for you to meet your classmates, make friends and study smarter.”
The woman wrote on her LinkedIn page that her internship required her to maintain the @OUGreek account to build a rapport with students around Athens and tweet ads for ClusterFlunk once the audience believed the account was legitimate.
She would later write on her Facebook page about how she lied to us in her interview. Then, she posted the story we wrote with the caption “OMG my internship is so scandalous!”
Again, we got duped. We’ve also corrected our story online and in today’s newspaper.
It is our policy for reporters to refrain from using anonymous sources, and any anonymous sourcing must be approved by The Post’s editor-in-chief before publication.
Because of the nature of our “Social Tuesdays” series, in which many of the sources we contact do not want their names attached to the accounts they moderate, we did not exercise enough caution when moving forward with the @OUGreek story. Proper approval wasn’t sought by either the reporter or editor.
Since learning of our missteps, we have vowed to adhere to our original standards for anonymous sourcing.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post’s executive editors.
