We've all been there: journalist files copy, editor-type "edits" piece into something that appears not to resemble anything like what said journalist filed. The standard operating procedure following such frustration is to vent anger with trusted fellow hacks in the pub over a pint and packet of pork scratchings. Or one could opt for the approach adopted by Rob Crilly, the Daily Telegraph, a freelance foreign correspondent, who went thermonuclear on Twitter, even dropping a C-bomb or two. Normally based in Pakistan, Crilly has recently been reporting from Libya, covering developments in the country's civil war. Incensed over the "twisting" of his copy by the paper's deputy news editor, Neville Dean, Crilly unleashed a barrage of abuse. "Hate being a freelancer when you've just gotta suck it up," he lamented in one tweet. "In reality people like Neville Dean maker [sic] you lie anyway." To make things worse, Crilly tweeted to Telegraph editor Tony Gallagher asking for Dean to be sacked. Things didn't stop there: the stream of tweets was automatically picked up by the Telegraph's Twitter feed and ran on its website. By this morning, Crilly had clearly thought better of his diatribe and deleted the tweets from his feed – although his rant appears to have won the sympathy of many fellow hacks in the meantime.
