One Friday night a few months back, social networking site Twitter went into one of its occasional frenzies. When the Twits get like this, they resemble a teenage girl who has been reduced to a trembling wreck because the gawky hunk in the next estate has smiled coyly in her direction. Everything is 'Oh My God' and overreaction. Perspective goes out the window. The overreaction virus kicks in, contagion results and soon hundreds, thousands even, are tweeting about something they know absolutely nothing about.

On this particular occasion, the cause of the frenzy was the death of model Glenda Gilson, which was announced in tones of shock and awe by one particular individual and was immediately taken up by several others. People who had never met her queued up to announce in less than 140 characters how sad they were to hear of her death. Others merely passed on the news. One person, about an hour after the original announcement, wondered whether it was too soon for Glenda Gilson jokes.

Happily, rumours of Gilson's death were greatly exaggerated and she continues to add to the gaiety of a bewildered nation with her romantic comings and goings. She's very happy at the moment, apparently. And good for her. Later that Friday night, the original tweet was taken down, as were all others referring to her demise. Nobody apologised, nobody explained. Another chapter in the increasingly ludicrous history of Twitter came to a close.

Old people like me in what is known as the old media are constantly being told that we need to get with the programme, embrace the new technologies and the myriad ways that news gets reported and dispensed around the world. We need to open our minds and respond to the fact that we are no longer the sole source of news, still less the first to get it to the people. This pressure reached its apex back in February when one of Dan Boyle's late night ejaculations on Twitter led to the resignation of Green junior minister Trevor Sargent. To question that analysis at the time was to announce yourself as a Luddite. But question it some of us did.

At this point, I should pay the obligatory respects. Some of my best friends are Twits, and they swear by it as a source of entertainment, information, communication and connection. Intelligent debates break out regularly; if Twitter teaches old media anything, it's that there is a voracious appetite out there for comprehensive and accurate debate about current affairs both as a worthy end in itself and as a refuge from the increasing obsession with celebrity and reality tv. This is particularly true at the moment when half the government is lying and the other half doesn't know what's going on. The media has become crucial in explaining and interpreting the behaviour of our leaders, if we can still call them that. The growth of Twitter in recent times is partially a response to the fact that much of the old media is no longer doing that job properly.

But those intelligent voices are being completely overwhelmed by the number of doltish, 24-carat ignoramuses who have made Twitter the unreliable source of news and information it has become.

Unfortunately, some of those ignoramuses are in the old media and are damaging their own profession playing by the 'check nothing, write anything, get it out there first' rules of Twitter. It was people from the old media who tweeted about Gerry Ryan's death before all the broadcaster's family had been told; a journalist from a daily paper killed off Glenda Gilson; the reason Twitter rumours of Mary Harney's resignation briefly caused consternation among journalists on Wednesday morning is that it was one of their own who had passed on the original tweet, which had been invented by some reality tv muppet to gain publicity for her show.

In that light, it was disappointing (to say the least) to see Ryan Tubridy react badly to Twitter criticism last weekend. "Twitter gets very unpleasant of a Friday night", he tweeted on Saturday, before adding later in the day: "I think my tweeting days are numbered. Fun but not always worth the grief, despite thick skin etc".

Much of the criticism he was reacting to centred around his interview with Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore. Tubridy had "set out to demolish Gilmore", one Twit claimed. "It was FF getting the knife in. No hard interview for Cowen", said another. Another poster said an advertisement "for Gay [Byrne] at the end [of the show] brought a tear to my eye, a tear for what was and is no longer".

I get that Tubridy is human, and that criticism of any kind has to hurt a little, but he surely knows better than to allow a few twerps on the internet to affect his mood. The comments about the Gilmore interview (which was solid and informative and as far from a hatchet job as you can get) were insensibly stupid but because Tubridy is an advocate of Twitter, he perhaps takes its dregs more seriously as a source of wisdom than some of the rest of us. He should stop. As long as he and other respected broadcasters and journalists treat Twitter as a beacon of truth rather than the ignorant rumour machine it so often is, its excesses will worsen, and its undoubted advantages become irrelevant.

ddoyle@tribune.ie

Lenihan: a man

of courage but a terrible minister

When Brian Lenihan said last week that the savings of Irish people were not under threat, how reassured did you feel? Did you say to yourself: "That nice Mr Lenihan would never give us a bum steer on something so important" and go back to dreaming about your retirement? Or did you think: "This man has been wrong about so many things so many times over the last two years that I think I'll switch to Rabobank"?

Until very recently, criticising Lenihan was like admitting to drowning a bag of kittens or not really liking Imelda May. When I wrote in this column earlier this year that he was shaping up nicely to be the worst minister for finance in recent history, I received many emails of criticism, the basic message of which was: how could you be so harsh about a man with cancer?

I don't mean to be nasty, because Lenihan's personal courage in the last 12 months has been an example to us all, but it is for his performance as finance minister that he will be remembered. And that has been a disaster.