PRESENT TENSE:YOU MOST LIKELY haven't heard of a guy called Raju Narisetti. He's an editor at the
Washington Post, looking after the features content and its website. And he was on Twitter, with about 90 followers. For a guy of that stature, that's not a lot of followers at all. Spam alone should have doubled that figure. If you stay around Twitter for more than a couple of weeks you find that there are many lovely young ladies who want to be your friend, writes
SHANE HEGARTY
Anyway, he doesn't have his Twitter account any more, because he used it to express a couple of mild opinions about the US health care debate and an age limit on politicians. After that, he made a "decision" to stop tweeting. Although, it seems, the decision was made for him, because the Washington Post's ombudsman wrote a column this week which came across like a parent dragging a kid by the ear and explaining to a teacher that the little blighter has seen the error of his ways and will not be naughty again.
It was, according to the Post, problematic for an editor to be seen to have an opinion, in case it gave "ammunition" to those who believe the Postto be biased anyway. This attitude coincides with the paper's new guidelines on its journalists' use of social networking sites, including Twitter and Facebook. It turns out that Narisetti had tweeted about these questions: "For flagbearers of free speech, some newsroom execs have the weirdest double standards when it comes to censoring personal views." Crikey, you really have to be careful about tweeting in your own backyard. His "decision" to stop followed soon after.
The Post's new guidelines stress the need for impartiality, and emphasise to its journalists that even webpages they consider to be private are effectively public, and that they shouldn't post anything they wouldn't want to be frozen forever in digital aspic. The guidelines add: " Postjournalists 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 favouritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility."
This is similar to a policy drawn up by the Wall Street Journal, whose stipulations include that journalists should not talk openly about upcoming articles or editorial plans, and that they shouldn't use false names or disparage either colleagues or competitors.
As you would imagine, the guidelines have led to mass sneering online, being seen by some bloggers, journalists and blogging journalists as yet another example of the dead tree media treating new technology with paranoia.
I’m on Twitter (but not Facebook) and it seems to me that each journalist needs to use common sense, and to find their own limits. It is interesting to see how some use Twitter as a release valve for their opinions, while others tread a careful path between being engaging and being a blabbermouth.
For instance, Mark Little, the Prime Timepresenter, has become a popular and prolific tweeter, and this week he mentioned he had "just sat
beside mary coughlan 4 half an hour. 2 cameras trained on her the whole time waitin 4 the scowl. Who'd want 2 b a politician." The language looks terrible in this context, but what matters is that he doesn't reveal what he thinks of those politicians he has met. Little is excellent for breaking news and interesting links and building anticipation of Prime Time, but he keeps his opinions to himself.
There can be other strong reasons why a journalist would want to keep a digital silence. One colleague tells me of the dangers of putting anything online, because it has the potential to cause problems when looking to travel to troublesome areas of the globe or to set up politically sensitive interviews.
The truth is that journalists contributing online are effectively on duty all of the time. They may be expressing personal opinions, but they are seen in the context of their attachment to their newspaper.
But if journalists and editors are engaging with social networking sites – as they should be – they need to give a little if they hope to take a lot back (ideas and feedback). The Post's diktat is a clumsy attempt to deal with its own image and its relationship with new technology at a time when personality and accessibility might be among the things that save so-called dead tree media. At the same time, when punditry is replacing journalism to varying degrees, it raises interesting issues about who should be allowed express an opinion.
By the way, the Postmade its rules in the same week that it announced the search for "America's Next Great Pundit", an X Factorfor opinion columnists. As some voices are silenced, then, others are being given a say.
- shegarty@irishtimes.com
- twitter.com/shanehegarty