Florida State University fans have launched a Twitter war (of sorts) over the New York Times’ seemingly unending coverage of preferential treatment given to the FSU football team.
Earlier this year, investigative journalist Walt Bogdanich detailed the school’s flawed investigation of FSU quarterback Jameis Winston, the Heisman Trophy winner accused of sexual assault. Later, Bogdanich joined Mike McIntire for a story about how Tallahassee police regularly “soft-pedaled allegations of wrongdoing” by several Seminoles players.
On Friday, the Times broke another story by Bogdanich and McIntire, reporting that P.J. Williams, an FSU starting cornerback, received just traffic tickets for what was initially regarded a criminal hit-and-run.
Seminoles fans apparently have had enough of the NYT, and are beginning to strike back on Twitter, says Tom Kludt of Talking Points Memo. FSU diehards started flagging links to the Times story on Williams as spam.
After ample reports of spam, the story is blocked. Then, whenever a user attempts to access the article, this Twitter warning pops up:
“The site you were trying to visit may be unsafe!
This link has been flagged as potentially harmful.
Harmful sites can include:
- Web forgeries or phishing sites
- Sites that download malicious software onto your computer
- Spam sites that request personal information”
The takeaway: Apparently, you don’t mess with Noles.
