Are Spokespeople really Tweeting?

After having a discussion about how twitter is actually used for business purposes yesterday (something I'm still not sold on), I was reminded of this op-ed piece by Jonathan Salem Baskin in Ad Age. Baskin says:

We live in an era when people find time during the business day to tell one another what they've just put in their coffee, yet it's still possible for an executive to be "unavailable for comment" in a news story.
I find this intriguing in a quaint sort of way. It's like saying, "Sorry, he's buttoning his spats" or "Sorry, she can't come to the phone; she's busy sorting punch cards."
I think corporate communicators need to invent a better excuse, or perhaps altogether revise their approach to unwanted inquiries from the media.

As I re-read this, I had to wonder, are there really spokespeople out there who are updating on twitter and facebook, while having admins tell the press they aren't available? I'm sure there are a few, but I have to think this is the exception, not the rule. I suppose that they think their privacy filters are enough to block media folks who seeking comment, but I'm not sure this something that I'd trust. Besides, as Baskin points out, others in the department are likely to be busy blogging, tweeting, facing, etc. about it anyway. I like Baskin's idea of dumping the "on the record" concept altogether:

What does "on the record" mean anyway? It's an archaic idea. Today's social mediaverse means every tidbit of content gets captured online by somebody, with or without veracity or attribution. To paraphrase Tom Friedman, the world is hot, flat and noisy. Nothing is off the record.

As I read this is threw my brain into an interesting historical parallel. My wife and I were pretending like we old last night and watched a history of the White House during Lincoln's presidency on C-SPAN. One of the most intriguing things from this was that Lincoln used to have several hours during the week that the public was welcomed into the White House to give their opinion in-person directly to Lincoln. Talk about tossing out the concept of "the record"! Can't imagine that these days, though I wish we could.

Wouldn't it be great if a president (of either the U.S. or a corporation) set up a feedback opinion loop like that, that was actually monitored? And no, it doesn't need to be twitter - sheesh, talk about minutia overload!