Paper's Decision to Twitter 3-Year-Old's Funeral Sparks Outrage

Mike McPhee, a Denver Post reporter who covered the service for his paper, without Twitter, said he was given permission to enter the chapel by Marten's uncle. McPhee's understanding was that journalists could enter the chapel as long as they were not intrusive and refrained from using cameras.

But he told ABCNews.com that Morson's Twittering was conspicuous and "highly uncalled for."

"We're at this emotional service and there was this reporter non-stop text messaging," he said. "How would you not notice?"

Smith, the mortuary manager, was dismayed to hear that the service received any media coverage at all. But he was especially surprised to learn that a reporter had live blogged about it and said it constituted an invasion of privacy.

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"I call that texting, but that's something that we need to be aware of," he said. "So that when families say, 'I don't want anyone in the chapel,' we have to say, 'well, there's this new technology called Twitter and we don't have a way of knowing if they're there.'"

Although critics challenge the Rocky Mountain News' decision to live blog Marten's funeral for a variety of reasons, some critics say that the new technology itself can overwhelm the values and decision-making process.

"Now, with digital technology, we have all these tools and methods -- various forms of blogs, RSS feeds, Twitter and other forms of text communication," said Robert M. Steele, a visiting professor at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., and journalism values scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg Fla. "And there is a tendency and a danger to run headlong into the arena of news events with these new tools.

"And that headlong rush, whether it's well-intended or skewed by business interests, can be disastrous." he added.

Although one can't detect all the potential landmines a new technology might present, Steele said he hoped Rocky Mountain News editors had substantial conversations about what they were going to do and why they were going to do it, adding that, regardless of their reasoning, it was "risky territory."

The issue is not black and white, Steele emphasized. But he raised a question: "Was there a legitimate journalistic purpose served in the telling of the story?"

New technologies have great potential. But without considering the issues and implications before employing them, the harm to individuals' and journalism's credibility can be profound, he said.

"It's an era -- this digital era -- when many journalists are experimenting, often in real time, and the consequences can be either remarkable or disastrous."