No, the New York Times Does Not Use Twitter to Break News

Michael Roston:

The Times takes a thoroughgoing and cautious approach to using Twitter when major news occurs. The social media desk operates in concert with, not independent of, our main news desk, which is comprised of homepage, front-page, and masthead editors. The updates we tweet are pegged to news reports that editors have approved and never seek to get out ahead of our news report. We focus on retweeting reporters and editors who are directly involved in covering the news, steering clear of external sources of information whose accuracy we cannot count on.