NBC has confirmed it did file a complaint with Twitter and the account of @guyadams has since been suspended.

The suspension followed a tweet from Adams from that included the email address of the NBC executive responsible for the US broadcaster’s Olympic coverage.

UPDATE: - Adams has since published an article on the Independent about his suspension (see below).

Adams tweeted: “The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven’t started yet is Gary Zenkel. Tell him what you think! Email: gary.zenkel…” Adams tweeted the email address of Zenkel, who is President of NBC Olympics.

A spokesperson for NBC Sports, said: “We filed a complaint with Twitter because a user tweeted the personal information of one of our executives. According to Twitter, this is a violation of their privacy policy. Twitter alone levies discipline.”

The justification for the suspension is that a corporate email is private and personal information.

“It is a violation of the Twitter Rules to post the private and confidential information of others,” a Twitter support representative wrote to Adams in an email, which he forwarded to the Wall Street Journal.

It appears that by publishing Zenkel’s email address, and laying him open to abuse from thousands of unhappy Olympic fans, Adams broke Twitter’s terms and conditions leaving his account open to being suspended.

That said, as Adams points himself, see below, Zenkel’s email address isn’t private so it is difficult see what the issue was. However, Krishnan Guru-Murthy (@krishgm) makes the point that Adams must have realised his action was provocative.

Is a corporate email address really private, personal information? That’s the justification for Twitter suspending @guyadams

— Krishnan Guru-Murthy (@krishgm) July 31, 2012

Having said that – using twitter for an email campaign to an individual rather than the general corporate email address pretty provocative

— Krishnan Guru-Murthy (@krishgm) July 31, 2012

and extremely irritating for the individual being targeted – who probably isn’t solely responsible for decisions being protested

— Krishnan Guru-Murthy (@krishgm) July 31, 2012

Whatever the case as @MattGarrahan of the Financial Times tweeted it is an ominous move and will to some suggest that Twitter is censoring journalists.

Twitter leaves itself open to criticism that has it has suspended Adams to appease a broadcasting partner. Last week Twitter and NBC announced they would  be working together to cover the London 2012 Olympics. Although I’m sure that is not the case.

Since that agreement NBC has had a torrid start to the games and has suffered a tsunami of online criticism for the way in which it is recording top flight events and screening them in prime time rather than broadcasting them live. It appears to be running its coverage as if the internet and social media do not exist.

As the New York  Times points out “the ire of #nbcfail was stoked Sunday when Vivian Schiller, NBC’s recently hired chief digital officer, retweeted a message that said “the medal for most Olympic whining goes to everyone complaining about what happens every 4 yrs., tape delay. She approvingly added “+1” to the Twitter posting, which was written by Jonathan Wald, the executive producer of ‘Piers Morgan Tonight’ on CNN”.

Problems for NBC began almost immediately as the terrific opening ceremony got underway when it scrapped Danny Boyle’s tribute to victims of the 7/7 London terror attacks and cut the segment. It instead aired a pre-recorded Ryan Seacrest interview with Michael Phelps. When critics called the move insensitive NBC retorted that its coverage was “tailored for the U.S. television audience”.

Other viewers complained that NBC hosts Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira and Bob Costas spoke too often and made ignorant comments during the ceremony. That was highlighted when the Americans failed to recognise the name of Tim Berners Lee saying they would  have to Google it.

In an article in the Independent Adams, where he noted #NBCfail  was trending, wrote: ”For example, Saturday’s titanic swimming clash between Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte wasn’t broadcast in the USA until several hours after it took place. Adding insult to injury, NBC had already announced the result on its own evening news bulletin.”

According to the Village Voice Adams says he is still trying to get to the bottom of why his account was suspended, but it certainly looks like NBC filed a complaint with Twitter. Adams has written to Rachel Bremer, head of PR in Europe for Twitter:

“Hi Rachel, They’ve dealt with this (see below). Would you mind if I give you a quick call to discuss? I’m of course happy to abide by Twitter’s rules, now and forever. But I don’t see how I broke them in this case: I didn’t publish a private email address. Just a corporate one, which is widely available to anyone with access to Google, and is identical to one that all of the tens of thousands of NBC Universal employees share.

“It’s no more ‘private’ than the address I’m emailing you from right now. Either way, quite worrying that NBC, whose parent company are an Olympic sponsor, are apparently trying (and, in this case, succeeding) in shutting down the Twitter accounts of journalists who are critical of their Olympic coverage.

Am I to presume, for example, that they decided to complain about me because of my recent article in the Indy’s news page about their various failures? (see link) And if so, isn’t it a bit rum that they succeed in shutting down my account? Either way, thanks for expediting all of this.”

 

Since his ban Adams has just published an article on the Independent’s website about this ban:

A few dozen people “re-Tweeted” the update over the ensuing hours. Several of them used the “hashtag” #NBCFail, which, thanks to the broadcaster’s comically inept coverage of the London games, has since been a trending topic on the microblogging site.

Later that afternoon, I was invited on the Los Angeles talk radio station KNX 1070 to discuss the absence of live coverage of the ceremony. If I remember correctly, I declared myself “utterly outraged” during that two-minute interview, saying with only a hint of understatement that NBC was: “treating the people of America with contempt.”

Yesterday morning, I wrote a short article for The Independent growing criticism of NBC’s Olympics coverage, which has resulted in network TV viewers being shown almost no high profile events live, while commentators made a series of basic factual errors – among them, calling Luxembourg “a small, central European country.”

Shortly after filing that article, I attempted to check my Twitter account. When I logged on, I was presented with a message saying it had been “suspended….