If enough members of the media say something, does that eventually cause it to become a “fact,” regardless of whether it is based in reality or not?

On Monday, the L.A. Times’ Technology Blog “broke” the news that the SEC had joined Twitter (”SEC tweets: Fraud cops join Twitter“).  The L.A. Times reported that among the steps that SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro was implementing as part of her get-tough stance at the agency, “the SEC also is trying to make itself more transparent.  To that end, the agency is now on Twitter… It’s all part of what Schapiro, three months into the job, is doing to help repair the agency’s tattered image as a watchdog.”

That was promptly followed by a post on the NY Times’ DealBook (”The S.E.C. Tweets for Transparency“), which referenced Oprah Winfrey’s recent, high-profile usage of Twitter and stated that “after getting the Oprah treatment, Twitter has gotten a plug from another market mover: the Securities and Exchange Commission. The S.E.C.’s chief, Mary Schapiro, is expanding the agency’s presence on Twitter, in an effort to increase the regulator’s transparency, The Los Angeles Times reported.  The S.E.C. has three feeds on Twitter: SEC Investor Ed; SEC News; and SEC Jobs.”

The “SEC Joins Twitter!” coverage then went global, as the UK’s Telegraph also published an article yesterday (”SEC turns to Twitter to prevent repeat of Bernard Madoff“) proclaiming that “after being criticised for a lack of transparency and failing to engage with informants, not least in the $65bn (£44.3bn) Bernard Madoff fraud case, America’s leading financial regulator has found a way to speak to the American people - through Twitter.”  The article adds that the move to Twitter “is part of the effort by Mary Schapiro, the SEC’s new chairman, to revitalise the regulator following intense criticisms of its operations in recent cases culminating in the Madoff scandal.”  Joining Twitter, the article states, “is one of a number of changes she has made at the agency since starting on January 20, including appointing a new enforcement director, rolling out new rules for following tip-offs, and streamlining the way cases are investigated.”

Ummmmm… no.

The problem with all of this is that it is not correct.  As Enforcement Action and Twitter users well know, the SEC has been using its “SEC_Investor_Ed” feed on Twitter since July 2008, and its newer SEC_News feed since December 30, 2008.  The only one of the SEC’s three Twitter feeds that even came into existence after Schapiro joined the SEC in January 2009 is an “SEC_Jobs” Twitter feed, which is irrelevant to the “transparency” and “get-tough” stories above and which, until yesterday, has not been used since its creation on February 4, 2009.

The bottom line is that Mary Schapiro has taken plenty of steps to put the SEC back on the right track, but joining Twitter is not one of them.