“All Washington Post journalists relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens. Post journalists must recognize that any content associated with them in an online social network is, for practical purposes, the equivalent of what appears beneath their bylines in the newspaper or on our website.”
That’s an excerpt from The Washington Post’s new social media guidelines. PaidContent has the entire thing. You really should read it, because it’s a hoot.
These guidelines came about because Raju Narisetti, a WaPo editor, had some tweets recently that revealed *gasp* that he had opinions about issues. When word leaked out that he had his own opinions and was sharing them on Twitter, apparently the WaPo top brass scrambled quickly to get this under control. That included Narisetti deleting his Twitter account. Pathetic.
So pathetic, that I’m kind of shocked that The Washington Post’s Omblog was allowed to publish all the details.
Obviously, WaPo is doing this to try and maintain what it perceives to be its journalistic integrity. That’s great. But as we’ve discussed recently, the idea that any kind of reporting lacks any kind of bias on some level is laughable. It’s fine if you want your organization to only present the facts with no opinions, but the notion that those reporters do not have their own opinions is absurd. WaPo can try to hide those opinions all they want, but they exist, regardless.
Here’s another excerpt:
“Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything—including photographs or video—that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility. This same caution should be used when joining, following or friending any person or organization online.”
Basically, if you are a human being, you must not show yourself as such online.
The whole thing is ridiculous, but my favorite bit is the last part. You can’t even friend or follow people known to be affiliated with some movement or cause, or presumably is even just a biased person.
This has all come up before, and it will undoubtedly come up again. Twitter is just the latest and probably easiest ways for people to reveal that they have their own opinions online. But this is also related to the issue of Facebook pictures getting people fired or just not hired from jobs. It’s not that companies/employers are asking their underlings to stop having opinions, or stop having fun at parties, they just want to make sure it’s hidden from the public. It’s basically “don’t ask, don’t tell” applied in a different sector.
Again, it’s certainly reasonable to ask journalists to remove their opinions from pieces if that’s the kind of news you’re aiming for. But when you start getting into what they say on their personal online accounts, public or not, things get awfully murky. How deep does that rabbit hole go? Maybe those journalists should also refrain from stating their opinions at dinner parties. Maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to laugh at Michael Moore’s new movie when it comes out. Actually, they probably shouldn’t even be allowed to see it. They should also be careful of any movies in their queue on Netflix. And any books they buy on Amazon. And any music on iTunes.
Hell, they should really just disconnect their computers from the Internet. And maybe stop leaving the office. Also, they should probably just stop having opinions.
[photo: flickr/robnas monster]
Pretty horrible. Also interesting that some folks can tweet their way into jobs, while others tweet their way out.
score one for the Washington Times. the left doesn’t seem very liberal these days. do you think they would behave better if they were given “not for profit” status? doubtful.
How does that actually make sense? The whole paranoia from places like the Washington Post is because the Right has been screaming “LIBERAL BIAS!” at the news for the last twenty to thirty years.
The fear of appearing to have a bias is the fault of attacks from the Right, not because of some Leftist motivation.
Trae: “The fear of appearing to have a bias is the fault of attacks from the Right, not because of some Leftist motivation.”
This comment does not make sense unless you actually believe that reporters are not more liberal than most Americans. Do you really believe that, say, 48% of NY Times reporters/editors voted for McCain and 52% voted for Obama? I think that most people would have trouble making that claim with a straight face.
So given that most reasonable people would concede that reporters/editors are more likely to be liberal than conservative, “objectivity” in reporting usually means suppressing one’s liberal bias.
Don’t blame the “fear of appearing to have a bias” on the people on the right who spoke up and pointed out the obvious.
Except you’re saying it’s impossible for those people to have been writing WITHOUT a bias.
It’s impossible for a PERSON not to have a bias. It’s not impossible for their WRITING and REPORTING to avoid a bias.
And not every newspaper is the New York Times, and the New York Times isn’t as left wing as most people seem to think.
Trae,
I agree that it is possible for a person’s writing and reporting not to have a bias. It just requires a lot of hard work to remain objective, and part of that hard work is scrupulously avoiding broadcasting one’s personal opinions in public. That was the topic of this TechCrunch article.
My point was that as the old media decided — either through sloppiness or calculation — to let their left-leaning biases show more in their reporting, it opened up an opportunity for a right-leaning alternative. And you can’t reasonably blame the people on the right who discovered that opportunity and made the most of it.
The fact that the debate is about whether or not a news outlet is liberal or conservative is a problem. Journalists are supposed to be unbiased. They are supposed to report the news objectively regardless of their personal feelings. They are supposed to do their due diligence, back up their resources, and report it like it is. That quickly becoming the lost art of Journalism. Unless you are an Op-Ed writer, you should never get a hint of their political affiliations or anything else.
I’m not convinced that any wing paper would sell, but it is the left that is more likely bunch various unrelated and incompatible special interests together that are hostile to each other. Aggregating hatreds together for the sake of defining a power structure is not very liberal at all. There is a reason these publications don’t make money. they have for a century defined themselves through the politics of “economics” and ignored the needs of their readers. I don’t agree with their economic slant, but to me what is worse is their shallow indifference to the people they claim to represent. news more then any other industry deserves to fail. giving journalism a “not for profit” status will not help this industry become ethical and deal with it’s abuse of power. what needs to be dealt with is these organizations need to be voices of the people. vague is no longer credible. Indie voices will come online and advertising people will note this in the coming decade. right now the social media elite reflects the bully pulpit of main stream media. this is about to change radically. I believe that Obama might of been elected simple because the news was trying to keep up with the leftist fringe that was online and destroying their audience. this factor will now work in reverse. I’m willing to bet that I can run a successful publication in paper or online that caters to a niche market that could be reflected to a singular online identity. marketing people are hip to this, but advertising buyers are still confused. I’m certain that is about to change and someone is about to change the landscape through phone calls to the right clients. perhaps the biggest reason there is a slow migration to social media is the idea that advertising buyers will have to acknowledge the politics of where they put their money. guilt goes a long way. it’s much easier to pretend that you aren’t burdened by responsibility because you were advertising to the “mainstream”. this factor of guilt to the advertising buyer will dissipate when advertising marketers create buying markets where their advertisers are shielded from that responsibility of “knowing” the niche that their dollars are going into. there really never was a left and right to begin with… these constructs were guilt free marketing constructs to start with, but the right wing traditionally meant a niche market… that was it’s biggest criticism and it’s strength. you now see there are many right wings. Many Right Wings is real “Liberalism”.
Wow…that comment is WAY too long…write a blog post dude.
Apparently the tweets reflected pretty innocuous opinions: it’s okay to raise the deficit to pay for health care; Senator Byrd is too old. Big whoop.
However, the WaPo wants to be able to claim to be objective, so they have the right to limit their reporters from broadcasting their personal opinions in other venues (including online).
So true. It’s like blogging was ten years ago with some putting their best foot forward online, trying to get noticed by the new startup… and Dooce getting famously canned. What’s next?
why does your profile go to porn site?
Someday soon the old world suits that run the press & media will understand that you can’t control everybody’s thoughts anymore… someday
This bizarre reality-denying policy has its competitors out here in the blogs, where individuality is more prized. We fight for credibility too, but not by clinging to tired old objectivity. It seems that train has left the station.
I happen to have just blogged on transparency vs. objectivity today: http://ottonomy...-news-curation/
Maybe the Post doesn’t want to devolve into a sensationalist rag the way Techcrunch has.
Sensationalist rag? They poke fun at plainly stupid things. I sincerely hope online stuff doesn’t go the way of old media and try to give equal treatment to unequal ideas. That would be a tragedy.
Really? What I see on the web is flame-baiting, poor research, shameless self-promotion, disingenuously provocative headlines, and worse. Old media started taking a dive because of ownership consolidation, not because of journalistic ethics. The web is a noisy mess of amateurs and it becomes clearer by the day. Case in point: Sarah Lacy.
What they need is a more reasonable social media policy…. like mine: http://23musing...l-media-policy/
On a serious note; it is tough for a lot of companies to know the best way to embrace (or otherwise) social media. It becomes easier to swallow if they realise that people have been talking about them discreetly and indiscreetly for years on all types of media and actually this is nothing new, just more accessible and prevalent than before.
Be brave & bold, be naked when you attack so mister Siegler, tell us, where to you draw the line? What is your vulnerability?
When your private opinions are behind a firewall called Yammer. When your email is not connected to an open network (because your not crazy)
you control, you tweak, you manipulate these opinions carefully. Then you publish.
And that’s exactly what the Washington Post tries to accomplish. Coherence.
So, what are the Techcrunch “rules”?
When do you get fired?
Be brave & bold, tell us mister Siegler.
poetic.
Hmm, no answer. What a surprise.
I don’t see any harm in making that WaPo reporter delete his twitter account. He is a journalist after all. Let’s not forget bloggers and journalists are not the same thing. They do have some similarities, but they are not the same. Or are they?
Maybe that Post reporter should just use a fake name on twitter.
Journalists need to be objective. People who happen to be journalists are free to say what they want.
And companies that employ journalists are free to give them rules to follow.
And people who happen to be journalists are free to quit if they find their employers’ rules too restrictive.
And people who happen to be readers are free to choose to get their news from whichever publication they like the most.
/snarkiness
The new reality is that people’s social comments are now more likely to be online, and therefore more likely to be searchable. This makes them public opinions rather than private ones. And when a journalist publishes his opinions publicly, it makes it more difficult for readers to accept his pretense of professional objectivity.
I agree with the WaPo actually – the journalist will find their job tougher and readership more dismissive if they’ve already broadcast their affiliations/sympathies.
Perhaps though this is an inevitable progression towards all journalists becoming commentators.
Well, twitter is becoming a challenge for those part of public life in general. India’s politician (ex-UN under sec gen) @Shashitharoor has learnt the hard way that tweeting (or conversing with people) can be really disastrous. Though he got away with a slap on the wrist, the damage was done.
Whether you’re a journalist or a politician, the problem with twitter is that it will give your detractors a lot of fodder to chew on and royally mess your existence. It’s better to stay off it or practice constraint, for your own good and that of the organisation to represent/work for.
Techcrunch needs to get out of this underdog role, take responsibility, show us the way, lead us to a higher place.
.
If a Journalist was to have an opinion that their boss was a wanker – would it be better if they tell their friends via a private social network – an intranet or to put it in public on facebook/twitter where everyone can read it ? I think Companies are just trying to establish where the new staff room is – the place you can slag off the boss without the general public listening, as I’m sure companies realize that staff have opinions and not all of them are favorable.
Simply put, some actions taken by employees could really hurt the organization they work for.
In the news-reporting business, an audience would not usually trust a reporter to cover a subject as fairly as possible, if that reporter doesn’t even make the effort to conceal her personal opinion from the public. Right or wrong, this causes damage to news-organizations.
I suspect that in the case of TechCrunch, where bloggers do not usually hide their opinions, most readers don’t expect posts to contain fair coverage.
What readers do appreciate, I speculate, is the open discussion (on TechCrunch comments and elsewhere on the Web) that follows these posts, which often provides them a fair coverage overall – depending on how much the reader is willing to read.
Newspapers normally don’t have the platform to provide – and crucially, readers don’t normally have the time to read – a whole discussion to get a fair view of things. So they settle for a reporting that is as fair as possible. When readers no longer count on a reporter/editor’s fairness, the newspaper will suffer.
hey….
tc (and others) don’t have an open policy regarding comments. they frequently delete comments that don’t meet their “rules/guidelines” whenever they feel like it…
comments in tc aren’t a place where enything goes.. tc provides you to post the comments that they want to have posted. if they feel your comment is “inappropriate”, it gets deleted…
peace
Does the US not have freedom of expression enshrined as a constitutional right?!
You are thinking of freedom of speech and that applies to: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…
This is a very common misunderstanding.
Thanks, that’s a helpful clarification. However do I therefore understand correctly that while the state cannot curb freedom of speech, it’s just fine for any private enterprise to write restrictions into their contracts relating to non-work aspects of employees’ activities ?
Are people OK with that?!
It’s perfectly legal and within their right as a private enterprise. It doesn’t matter what “people” are OK with it.
This is not about US law Azania, it’s about ethics. Also;
1. It’s about Techcrunch using the Washington Post to get visibility. David doesn’t exist without Goliath.
2. It’s about the moral implications of openness. What to tweets or not to tweet, that’s the question.
But remember, Marc, Goliath didn’t exist after he fought with David!
Well Marc, if an organisation is able to curtail an individual’s right to express themselves in their personal capacity there really is no opportunity for discussing ethics – the battle has already been lost and so there’s no point in a skirmish.
No wonder journalism is dead.
Ah, but an employment agreement is voluntary. You don’t like the concept of “objective news,” and the restrictions on your personal expression that go along with it, don’t work there.
There are plenty of work opportunities for journalists who want to be able to express their own opinions in public.
Great article that poses the question – ‘Does anyone have a private life anymore?’ Privacy seems to be a thing of the past, especially in the world of journalism.
In the internet age your personal ‘brand’ or identity is never off duty and your reputation is always ’switched on’.
Crazy. Do you think the Post understands that an “unbiased” press is an invention of the 20th century? The U.S. Constitution protects our ability to say or print our opinions. Newspapers used to be very open about their bias. The attempt to remove “all” bias has created problems. Just as MG wrote “the idea that any kind of reporting lacks any kind of bias on some level is laughable.”
no….
the “opinon” of news medias has led to the rise of the “fox news” crap that we get, were opinions are routinely put forth as “news”.
now, if you like that, because the opinions parallel your own views, then life is great.. if, on the other hand, the opinons of the news outlet is differnt than yours, then the “news” that’s being spouted is biased at best…
news organizations, by and large, realized this, and had the “opinion” page, where opinions could be discussed/displayed…
for the most part, large new organizations (until recently) have tried to present the news in an unbiased manner. facts, and research were a good portion of what went into a story…
but now, you simply get a plate of bias, with a side order of opinions, with all of this wrapped as “news”…
thanks murdoch!!
peace
Tim3,
Your point is largely correct, but incomplete. Fox news has a counterpart on the left, MSNBC, that reports the news from a left-wing perspective.
More importantly, the decision to create Fox News was made because Murdoch (and others) saw an unmet business opportunity. As the old-fashioned media increasingly presented the news from the perspective of the left, people who were at the center or center-right wanted an alternative.
Murdoch make a good business decision: because most Americans are not leftists, Fox News now has higher ratings than CNN and MSNBC combined.
I’m going to side with WaPo on this one.
The idea of an unbiased press might be an invention, but it still exists in the minds of most people. When a journalist who works for a traditional media company posts personal opinions online, they are risking those opinions being tied to their professional life. The web has impacted our ability to intermingle the two and for most people that isn’t a conflict. However, most journalists are not op-ed writers. What they put forth on paper below their byline isn’t supposed to be their opinion, but rather a reporting of facts through a news organization. Is there some bias associated with that reporting? Probably – it is hard to get a truly bias free reporting of the facts these days. However, when we read an non op-ed piece of journalism in a major publication we depend on the fact that journalistic integrity is still largely in effect.
Mike and MG can write what they want as 95% of what is posted on TC are op-eds that contain factual information. TC is new media, they have that luxury. The Washington Post is old media and while they need to make adjustments to the way the world gathers information, I for one do not want them leaping into the abyss just because that model works well for an organization like Tech Crunch. When old media tries to emulate new media and starts to intermingle reporting and commenting you get FOX News and MSNBC; two organizations that should have zero credibility as “news organizations” with anyone whose head isn’t firmly up their ass.
“The U.S. Constitution protects our ability to say or print our opinions.” No, the US Constitution says that the government cannot infringe on this inalienable right. It doesn’t mean that an organization like The Washington Post can’t infringe on it.
This is true, but, having an opinion doesn’t make you a journalist. The Washington Post is a newspaper that employs journalists. Journalist don’t get paid for their opinions, unless you write Op-Eds, journalists get paid to research, analyze, and report objectively and unbiased news.
lol.
Yes, the current form of journalism is a 20th century invention. The reason news reporters developed and strengthened the code of ethics (http://spj.org/ethicscode.asp) of professionally objective reporting was to counteract the blatantly political motivations behind the biased papers run by folks like William Randolph Hearst and Horace Greely.
By cultivating the perception of objectivity through limiting exposure of their biases and being professional about trying to report and write stories as fair and balanced as they can on a deadline, they hoped to gain the trust of their readers and bring a multitude of opinions into one place.
I don’t know about you, but I would rather know the reporters personal opinions. It gives context when I’m reading their articles.
Like you said it’s crazy to assume that reporters don’t have opinions and that their opinions aren’t going to sneak into the writings.
If I know the position of the reporter, then I can keep that in the back of my head while I’m reading. No matter what anyone says all publications are biased and knowing what the bias is beforehand allows you to compensate for it while you’re reading.
If you pay attention, you’ll notice only left-leaning bias attempting to hide. Conservative bias is out in the open.
Very telling indeed.
BTW, you can read what he twittered about here: http://en.wikip.../Raju_Narisetti
That’s not pathetic. Those are professional standards. That you don’t understand them is pathetic.
Agreed
There are two ways to write the news: State your opinions and biases up front, and then write from that perspective; or keep your opinions and biases to yourself — keep them secret — and try to make your writing so unbiased that no one would be able to guess your personal beliefs.
“News” is increasingly being written and edited from specific political perspectives. Everyone has opinions and biases — that’s what makes us human — but anyone who wants to claim the label of “objective” has to be willing to keep his or her personal perspective hidden from the world.
This is very similar to the point that Politicians too have opinions, the Shashi Tharoor shutup controversy http://tinyurl....ashicattleclass
Ahh Twitter, I love it really!
Beware, Wapo! We’re tracking your opinions and all of your journalists so everyone can see how much they agree and disagree.
http://whereistand.com/Wapo
It’d be much, much better if the tweets and political leanings of the reporters could be discovered by clicking on their bylines.
This would lead to more anti-government hires in the press room.
Twitter, we love ya.
This reminds me of a Saturday Night Live skit that is worth watching – http://bit.ly/10fFU9 – “yes we can take sides, yes we can”.
“Reality has a well known liberal bias.”
Yes, that Steven Colbert is a clever one! As is his boss Jon Stewart.
Problem is, “reality” for multimillionare celebrities in New York and California is not always the same as the reality in the rest of America.
The fact that you don’t see that this is an issue is a sad reflection on your own standard of journalism.
Can you not see that what you say in public reflects on your employer? Can you not see that that becomes significantly more of an issue when your job is to report unbiased facts?
Imagine if you were (for example) posting a review of A Microsoft product versus an Apple product, but at the same time posting on Twitter saying how much you worship Steve Jobs, Should your readers trust you?
And how about if you were to post on Twitter saying how much you’re looking forward to having some sexy fun with Arrington’s dog. Do you think you’d keep your job?
What you say in public directly affects both your employer and your readers. *All* companies should have guidelines about how their employees should behave on social media, if only to save them from themselves.
that sounds like such an awesome world you want to live in. hope you find it.
MG, most people live in that world. You’re lucky that your professional life allows you the freedom it does.
Letting the public see the motivations and thots of the people writing their ‘news’ is part of transparency.
To pretend that your writing is unbiased is just silly and points to more sinister motivations, ie, hoodwinking the public. Or maybe they are isolated and arrogant enough to actually believe it.
After all, doesn’t every one think like a East/Left Coast progressive? Except for the rednecks in trailer parks who have hoods in their closets….
To me, its just like another thing these media conglomerates do: hawking movies, music, etc owned by the parent company under cover of ‘reviews’ without disclosing the conflict of interests involved, something that will not fly in a more responsible medium, like blogging.
I wrote a bit about some of this on my tumblr:
http://is.gd/3KQns
As yes, the Washington Post, that paragon of, well, something. Whenever someone else has a conflict of interest, they’re among the first to be incensed.
WaPo just published a column arguing that it was wrong to arrest Roman Polanski. The columnist gave all sorts of reasons, but neglected to mention that she’s married to the Polish Foreign Minister.
That’s relevant because the Polish FM is currently lobbying, in his official capacity, to get Polanski off.
http://patteric...anskis-freedom/
That’s an op-ed, not a piece of journalism. They aren’t held to even remotely the same standards.
Columns are not news stories based in fact, nor to they purport to be. There’s a whole different department in every paper for writing news.
Hello, I would just like to say thank you for using my photo for this article. It is a privilege to have it featured and i’m honored that you could find a use for it. Thanks again.
twitter interviewed me for their first promo video in the spring of 2008. we filmed it in @ev’s lovely condo. I was chosen out of hundreds of “power users” because the marketing coordinator liked the way i used twitter for indie musicians & training indie marketers to do the same for their bands – this was “back in the day” (”the day” being the year 2007 – 2008).
Anyhow, as i talked about how i was showing bands how to use twitter from their mobile phones, and how one of my bands was tweeting setlists, the marketing coordinator asked me to define twitter in a sentence.
i said:
Twitter is your own personal news feed. I tell my clients and bands to think of it as their own personal AP wire and that’s usually when they understand how to use it.
2 weeks later i was in the twitter office discussing a few more things, and was warned by someone from their recruiting agency who said, as best as i remember:
“we don’t like to call it a personal news feed too much because news agencies get upset, they don’t want to be replaced.”
‘Oh i totally understand’ – said i, feigning compassion but really thinking “fuck those news agencies, don’t they understand what it means to combine sms with rss?”
and so, MG, i have the same comment to offer you. this, to me, resembles the same situation that we have with the popular musicians (see: @courtneylover79 – my absolute fave musician tweeter) using twitter to say what her team of marketers think is “too much” but then again….that’s who she is! i mean, it’s courtney love, right? what else does anyone expect? There are umteen blogposts about whether twitter will ruin the mystique of fame, and other responses from people like me who say “twitter will only damage mystique if you hire someone to tweet for you”
because frankly, when dave navarro & courtney love tweet back and forth to each other (which they regularly do) my inner 19 yr old is filled with more than mystique: it’s geek love.
What you have here with WaPo is similar only this time the mystique is around journalists and not famous musicians.
What i wouldn’t do to read tweets (’real’ tweets) from George Will – then again, he’s the king of op-ed. Even still, i understand why opinions by journalists may reveal a bias which WaPo is hesitant to reveal. however, what they fail to realize is the real gem that rss brought in to the lives of those who consume journalism. Newsflash: we are well aware of WaPo’s bias. I’m from DC, and believe me, they are predictable and always have been. Letting us know more about it may actually increase their sales. (i’m serious)
Ultimately, the concept of a “news feed” in journalism was created by the industry of journalism itself. Now media has expanded it’s repertoire of tools and instead of adapting, WaPo is attempting to maintain mystique around it’s journalists without realizing that the masses already know about bias, and like it or not, Ev & Biz built a new Associated Press system, one that can’t be tweaked by any one group of users.
Does anyone read thomas pynchon ’round here? if so, you know like i do: communication systems will always always always find a way to survive. it’s the second law of thermodynamics.
i digress. another interesting article. and to think i had stopped reading TC! FTR: i found out about this article b/c MG tweeted a link. and so it goes…
i just think Twitter is the latest tool to put forth a piece of yourself online. They will keep coming, companies will keep trying to block them, but the effort is ultimately futile. the core idea behind the blockade of these things: that employees don’t have opinions/lives outside of work is humorous. they’re not going to stop doing/thinking these things, they’re just hiding them. bias just becomes less transparent bias.
How did the concept of accountability get lost on so many people over the last two decades?
The core of this is certainly not that employees don’t have opinions/lives outside of work. The core is that in this day and age the use of social media can tie your personal life to your professional life and often times that isn’t a good thing (from either perspective employer/employee).
If someone wishes to to say whatever they want, whenever they want in the social media public sphere, then it would behoove them to have a career where that won’t make an impact. In a Utopian world it wouldn’t matter, but the reality is that we all still judge books by their cover.
Ok, Ben K, some solid points about journalistic integrity. but i sure do like knowing what bias each journalist has, and if she or he is willing to boast the ability to sustain a living in journalism while still maintaining a bias, then he or she is a stellar journalist. and if not? well, since i read, and am smart enough to tell the difference, i’ll know who carries which bias and why they may be reporting the news as they do. either way, i am the consumer of news, and right now, its really easy to discern which news is best for me.
How is that bad?
I have a BSc in journalism. Most of my friends and fellow students were extremely liberal and still are. If you were a conservative journalism student (which I wasn’t), you really stood out and were ostracized. Journalists are supposed to be fair and balanced, but they do have very strong opinions.
shoot, this just dawned on me – apologies for the second comment.
but fyi, i am a washingtonian, born and raised. I am the daughter of a politician.
and i have to say – the more i think about it the more emphasis i think needs to be placed on this:
you will be hard pressed to find ANY washingtonian who would tell you the WaPo is *not* biased. every washingtonian knows the bias.
every now and then they support a surprise politician but that’s rare.
how would tweets change this? it so wouldn’t. it wouldn’t. i just wouldn’t.
::end transmission::
This is bigger than what you’re making it. To be clear, there is some wonderful journalism and great reporting being done. Yet there are also often stories that utilize tactics based on association and innuendo. This is the Washington Post, protecting the Washington Post.
The average person makes a distinction of when they’re at work and when they’re not on the clock, but thanks to the media, don’t make allowances for everyone else being off the clock. I am inclined to agree that people, which includes journalist have their own personal opinions, that are separate and apart from their employ. Sometimes, their opinions are even the result of their employ. However I see the policies of the Washington Post as extensions of behavior seen in other venues. Athletes are routinely fined for publicly deriding the leagues and officials that oversee them (what of complements?). I can see there being a policy of not disrespecting an official during the game or at the venue, but a week later and thousands of miles away, their still not allowed to say, yeah that was a bad call even when the entire world has it on TiVo and we all know it was a bad call. When are athletes allowed to be private citizens and so have opinions about WORK? In the tech field it is common for corporations to attempt ownership of all ideas someone they employ may have during the employ and even after the employment is terminated as they attempt to prevent you working in a similar capacity at another competitor for months or more. If you work for a tech concern, apparently you have no ideas that are your own as they apparently own them all. If they hired you, ideally its possible you have similar thinking and if you have similar thinking maybe it was only a matter of time before you came up with a similar idea. Despite there being some connection for them to hire you, especially if your education is in line with their needs, tech corporations still take credit for what you’re thinking. Famous people and politicians routinely have no private lives and apparently are never private citizens again ever because they make their living in the public spotlight or at least that’s what journalist would have you believe.
NOTE: Journalist work in the public spotlight as well. Therefore, they couldn’t possibly expect to digg (I couldn’t resist) up every possible thing on everyone else without having the same rules used against them. Clearly the Washington Post has a dilemma. As an organization, if you routinely go about spotlighting political/personal associations, unscrupulous behavior and occasionally outright character assassination, you can’t do that when the personal lives of the people you have doing the reporting look very similar to the lives of the people they’re reporting on.
I don’t agree with any of these policies but journalist more than others have been the ones pushing them because it sells. Maybe its time they realized that there is the possibility that people might want to know that their local or press media personalities are every bit as flawed as the people they report on. I’ve long said that if the famous really want to push back on reporters and the media, they need to hire private investigators and do some unearthing of their own.
All of these practices are shallow and trite. What could come out even about the people doing local news that could make the viewing public say, “Yeah, you’re one to talk!”. That’s what this is about. Even if the reporter is squeaky clean, but has some great friends who they’ve known all their lives who have raucous Facebook pages or are members of organizations that seek to extol whatever the ‘wayout’ ideology of the moment is, can their be consequence for news and other media outlets?
Sadly, in the world that news and media outlets have worked so fervently to create, the answer is a resounding yes and that’s what the Washington Post is trying to head off.
Just another poignant reminder that the old models and ways of business and society are dieing a well earned death! Chalk this up to the growing pains of a ubiquitous two way information pipeline, where not having an opinion makes you irrelevant.
All who take a well thought out riposte and sling it to the world to enrich us on a particular article or insight, is already the next generation of journalist. How it shakes out is anyone’s guess, but this I know for sure, old media dinosaurs cant stuff the genie back into pandoras box, its out and its free.
As a child, I wondered how dinosaurs had sounded. Now I know.
Whatever. This is exactly how it was when I worked at Apple back in 2004-2005. This is nothing new and I couldn’t be online in any way back then or they’d get pissed. It sounds horrible but corporate employees have dealt with BS like this for years.
Funny, the news shouts about first amendment freedom of speech rights and then the WP shuts down it’s own reporters freedom of speech. Seems that no one gets that is the real story.
Taj, it’s been discussed elsewhere in the comments, but just to recap: freedom of speech is freedom from the GOVERNMENT restricting speech.
The Founding Fathers were afraid that a central government, left unchecked, would infringe on the rights of the individual. That’s why they built in specific restrictions (and checks and balances) on government’s power.
However, we can and do censor our own speech all the time, for personal, social and business reasons. And people are perfectly free to make voluntary contractual agreements with others (e.g. employers) to not talk about certain things in public.
“And people are perfectly free to make voluntary contractual agreements with others (e.g. employers) to not talk about certain things in public.”
This is absurd – who willingly gives up their right to freedom of expression? The employer dictates the contractual terms and the employee can sign up or take a walk. Either the “Founding Fathers” didn’t notice they were just outsourcing the trampling of people’s rights to free enterprise or they didn’t care.
Johan: “The employer dictates the contractual terms and the employee can sign up or take a walk. ”
That’s about right.
Let’s say I offer you a thousand dollars if you can abstain from posting comments for one month. If you don’t post any comments, you get the money. If you do post, even one comment on some obscure blog, you get nothing. Would you take the deal? What if it were $10,000?
If you take the deal, you are voluntarily giving up some of your free speech rights, in exchange for money.
If you don’t like the terms, don’t sign the contract. Remember that there are plenty of jobs available for people who like to give their opinions in public, so no one is “forced” to work for, say, the Washington Post, if they don’t like the terms of the employment agreement.
There used to be a saying, “It’s a free country!”
Any writer can babble as much as he wants online, but that doesn’t mean the Washington Post Company has to pay him to do it.
So many maybes… Maybe you should stick to opinionated link baiting instead of trying to make Twitter into a poster child for First Amendment rights.
Twitter is for sharing your lunch items, not a ranting spot for disgruntled journalists angry at their boss or whatever they’re forced to write about.
why not just setup a twitzee http://twitzee.com so anyone can send tweets anonymously!
WaPo should consider a writer’s expression of personal opinion to be a service in the spirit of journalistic integrity not the opposite. Everyone has biases. Their writer’s have biases. That those biases are out in the open just means that we are able to see what they are and calibrate our expectations accordingly.
Hiding the bias increases rather than lessens its impact. If WaPo cares about honest journalism, they should support the free expression of their writers.
Proof that it is not just abut the technology, it is perhaps primarily about the culture.
Inner logic at Washington Post: If opinions are corrupting, just don’t have opinions.
A quote and link to more illustrative examples of WP’s culture/stance re: opinions (relevant sections in Points 3 and 4):
‘The [former] editor of the Washington Post, Leonard Downie, even goes so far as decline to vote, because he thinks that casting a ballot will compromise his objectivity. This is what might be called the “hard” position on conflicts-of-interest.’ — Malcolm Gladwell regarding the Washington Post’s ethical guidelines http://bit.ly/GZx1N
It’s amusing that the Washington Post republishes TechCrunch content but has chosen not to republish this: http://www.wash...8050701103.html