If Twitter is just another way of sending out news…

For some people and organisations Twitter has become, at least in part, simply another way of sending out timely news. Issue a news release? Check. Put it on website? Check. Send out tweet with headline and link back to site? Check.

All sounds fairly typical and unexceptional and if you’d asked me a few days ago I wouldn’t have added an exception or caveat to that sort of process, even if it didn’t involve a formal press release or link. If you treat Twitter as an outlet for official, timely news then that’s how you use it. I say “a few days ago” because I instinctively found something uneasy about the news from Utah:

It was a very modern way to announce a very old-fashioned death.

Shortly after midnight in the US state of Utah, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff picked up his Apple iPhone, opened up a Twitter “app” on his handset and began tweeting.

But Mr Shurtleff’s 134-character composition was no ordinary post. This was not a piece of miscellany from the 53-year-old’s home life, a link chosen to amuse or interest his followers, nor even a political prod at his Democratic rivals.

Instead, Mr Shurtleff used Twitter to announce that most important of all things: the death of a human being, convicted murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner.

“I just gave the go ahead to Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner’s execution. May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims,” the attorney general wrote.

You can read the full BBC report here, but what’s your view: is it ok to report any news on Twitter or are there some stories that should be avoided? And if so, what’s the criteria?