Madison Guernsey
@GUERNS_M_D
http://bleacherreport.com/users/731440-madison-guernsey
John Polson is a film director and organizer of the world’s largest short film festival, Tropfest. Recently, Tropfest made headlines when this year’s winning film became the third in six years to be accused of plagiarism. Following each of the three instances, Polson has appropriately responded and defended the films. Australian journalist Luke Buckmaster interviewed Polson about Tropfest, asking him about how films are judged and other information regarding the financial side of the contest. After the article was published, Polson exploded on Twitter, accusing Buckmaster of changing quotes and making Polson and Tropfest appear in a negative light.
He sent several (now deleted) tweets directly to Buckmaster, putting their spat out in the open for the Twitter-verse to watch unfold. The original article and tweets can be seen here. I understand Polson defending himself and his organization, but to do so on a public and widely used platform such as Twitter is a bad idea, especially in light of the recent plagiarism accusations. Not only does the Twitter conversation expose Polson as aggressive and hot headed, it negatively affects his credibility regarding the plagiarism issue. It almost comes off as if Polson is trying to change his words, in fear he might have accidentally misspoke during the interview.
Whether Polson’s rant had validity or not, it’s a matter that should be handled privately. Both Polson and Buckmaster exposed themselves and are now susceptible to ridicule. Buckmaster’s reputation is tarnished simply because of Polson’s accusations of slander and improper reporting. All of the tweets were deleted, but as we all know word spreads extremely fast on the internet, even faster on Twitter where both users have a substantial following (Buckmaster has over 24,000 followers).
How this will affect the next Tropfest and Buckmaster’s career is unclear at this point, but my best guess is that the combination of Polson’s Twitter rant and plagiarism trouble will only add negative attention to the film festival as well as its founder.
Then the issue comes up of whether or not The Australian, Buckmaster’s publication, has a social media policy in place to either encourage or discourage its writers from engaging in this type of activity. I think it’s appropriate and necessary for writers to defend themselves when attacked like Buckmaster was, but how should one handle a situation such as this?
