Rieder: The Twitter death machine

Former Baywatch actress Donna D'Errico doesn't have much of a track record as a journalism professor, social media savant or ethics guru.

But her blunder on Twitter and her forthright apology can teach volumes about how ridiculous it is to spread information when you have absolutely no idea whether or not it is true.

D'Errico was a key player in the latest case of Twitter burying someone who happened to be very much alive.

On Tuesday night, the actress tweeted that her San Fernando Valley neighbor Stephen Collins, the 7th Heaven star who has been hit with child molestation allegations, had committed suicide. "That guy from 7th Heaven lives right around the corner from me & just shot himself a few minutes ago," she wrote.

But he hadn't. Turns out the beleaguered actor wasn't even home at the time.

D'Errico quickly deleted her tweet. And, very much to her credit, she called herself out in no uncertain terms. "I just tweeted out what I was being told by my neighbor who were on scene. I apologize for tweeting what I'd heard before confirming it," she wrote early Wednesday morning.

"I apologize for tweeting what I'd heard before confirming it." Those words should be read and reread and memorized by everyone who ever posts anything on social media, let alone engages in journalism.

Twitter has made a powerful contribution to public knowledge. It's an invaluable early warning system for news and a matchless source of instant reports from the scene of major events. We learned far more than we would have otherwise about Iran's ill-fated Green Movement, the Arab Spring, the Ferguson protests and so much more because of it.

But it's also a fire hose of misinformation, error and nonsense.

Internet rumor debunkers like Snopes.com and the newly launched Emergent could stay busy for a long time just beating back false tweets about celebrity deaths. Among those whose premature demises were tweeted are Morgan Freeman, Eminem, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Bill Cosby, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Sylvester Stallone.

Some of these celebs were felled by Twitter hoaxes. But often the culprit behind Twitter falsity is right out of the Donna D'Errico playbook: hitting send before having a clue as to what the facts are.

And, even more outrageous, sometimes journalists, not TV actresses, are the guilty parties.

Back in 2011, in a highly publicized incident, British anchor Jon Snow tweeted that CNN had suspended then-host Piers Morgan, Trouble was, it hadn't.

In the aftermath, Reuters columnist Felix Salmon wrote that it was perfectly fine for individual journalists (but not official news outlet accounts) to tweet unconfirmed rumors. His rationale was that Twitter is the moral equivalent of the newsroom these days, and reporters have always gossiped to the newsroom.

What a terrible idea. Twitter isn't a newsroom, it's a distribution mechanism. It's one thing to swap juicy innuendo with a colleague at the bar. It's quite another to broadcast it to the world.

Trying to stamp out rumors on social media is no doubt as uphill a struggle as eliminating reality TV. But it's certainly worth the effort.

The abundance of information in the digital age is a wonderful thing. The amplitude of untruth, not so much.

Maybe Donna D'Errico can lead the campaign.