NEW YORK - President Barack Obama's candid comment that rapper Kanye West is a "jackass" for his outburst at the MTV awards is provoking a debate over standards of journalism in the Twitter age.
ABC News says it was wrong for its employees to tweet Obama's comment on West's treatment of country singer Taylor Swift.
The network said some of its employees had overheard a conversation between the president and CNBC's John Harwood and didn't realize it was considered off the record.
Although they are competitors, CNBC and ABC share a fiber optic line to save money, and this enabled some ABC employees to listen in on the interview as it was being taped for later use.
Their attention was drawn to chatter about West, who was widely criticized for interrupting Swift as she accepted an award at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards to say that Beyonce deserved it.
Emails shot around among ABC employees about Obama's comments, said Jeffrey Schneider, ABC News spokesman. Before anything was reported on ABC's air or website, at least three network employees took to Twitter to spread the news and the story was off and running.
