Attorney General Sentenced to Prison?

I couldn’t believe it when this tweet popped up:

Was Texas Attorney General Jeffs sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting a child? Wait a minute… The Attorney General for Texas is Greg Abbott, not Abram Harker Jeffs. So, what’s going on here?

If you look at the other tweets from Texas.gov, the Official State of Texas website, you’ll notice that most tweets begin with the agency, followed by a headline and link. Basically, the Twitter account for Texas.gov is a repository of news from agencies across the State. For example, you’ll see [Water Development] [headline] [link], which seems harmless in most cases. But unfortunately, you might end up with a big oops like what was tweeted here.

My point is not to bash Texas for making a mistake but to stress the importance of injecting quality control into social media activities.

Despite the numerous gaffes and blunders that public figures and entities have made over the years, social media is still generally seen as a valuable tool to improve communication and collaboration, at least for the time being. Government should keep working hard to ensure its social media activities stay in a positive light, taking the time to manage its content to avoid putting its foot in its mouth.

Or in this case, putting its elected official behind bars.

UPDATE: Texas.gov has been notified and has since inserted a colon after Attorney General to clarify its tweet. All is well again.