The Washington Post Slaps the Twitter Handcuffs on Its Staff
Here's something everybody should understand about journalism. The reporters, columnists and news anchors you follow almost all have opinions about the subjects they cover. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, it is a good thing, because any person who immersed him or herself in a vital, contentious subject all day and formed no opinion about it whatsoever would be an idiot, and you do not want to get your news from idiots.
Some journalists (like me) are paid to express opinions. Others are paid to report news without regard to their opinions--and many, though not all, do an excellent job of this. And many more are required to hide their opinions by their bosses, in the belief that it builds reader confidence to maintain the illusion that the news is produced by people without opinions, i.e., idiots.
That is the spirit behind a new policy at the Washington Post about staffers using Twitter, which manages to get both social media and journalism wrong at the same time, and suggests that the newspaper is working hard to make itself as irrelevant as possible.
The Post drew up its policy after one of its managing editors, Raju Narisetti, posted tweets to his Twitter account that touched on a couple of political issues:
We can incur all sorts of federal deficits for wars and what not. But we have to promise not to increase it by $1 for healthcare reform? Sad.
and
Sen Byrd (91) in hospital after he falls from "standing up too quickly.” How about term limits. Or retirement age. Or commonsense to prevail.
There you have it: a man whose sole job is to focus on news and issues has opinions on health care, deficits and term limits. Shocking.
It was shocking to Narisetti's bosses, anyway, who quickly instituted rules for staff Twitter and other social-networking activity that included the following: "When using these networks, nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment ... 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."
See, obviously you and I know a guy like Narisetti, not being an idiot, has opinions. That's fine. As long as he treats them like a shameful secret and hides them from us. Then we can all have trust in the media!
Sigh. I've expounded before on why it's a bogus idea that repressing opinions makes journalists fairer or more trustworthy. In short: by having policies like these, newspapers only reinforce an inaccurate idea of their own profession. Objectivity does not mean having no opinions. (Having no opinions more likely is a sign of apathy or stupidity.) Nor does it mean having opinions but hiding them. It means having opinions—as intelligent, informed people do—but not subordinating your work to them. It means being truthful and fair about your area of coverage, even if doing so hurts the causes you support.
If you slant your coverage, hiding your beliefs does not make your work better. If your work is fair, sharing your beliefs does not make it less so (on the contrary, it provides your reader more information to keep you honest). But by perpetuating a fiction no one believes anyway, newspapers don't make themselves trustworthy; they just seem phony.
What's more, as I wrote when the Wall Street Journal adopted a similarly hamhanded policy earlier this year, this kind of policy sabotages the kind of intimate connection with readers that Twitter and other services make possible, and that newspapers desperately need. (As do their writers, for the day that newspaper lays them off and they're on their own; the Post's policy should make any journo with options think twice about taking a job there.)
I get why: to successfully use Twitter et al., you have to give up control, and that scraes scares the hell out of institutions like the Post. Their old way of doing business is to make sure that (except for a few stars like Bob Woodward) their staff remain anonymous drones who subordinate themselves to the paper's brand.
But that day is over, and the Post only hurts its brand by handcuffing its writers on Twitter. Its policy amounts to: just don't say anything interesting, and things will be fine.
Now, there actually is some common sense in the Post's new dictates. For instance, the reminder that you should treat anything you post to Twitter, Facebook, etc., as if it can and will be widely read. But these common-sense guidelines should be left to just that: common sense (without which, why would you have a job at the Post in the first place?). There are plenty of reasons to avoid oversharing online—for instance, not antagonizing a source you might need information from. But that decision should be left to the writers, and the writers judged on their work.
As for Narisetti's tweets, restricting them has nothing to do with serving the reader better; it's all about avoiding embarrassment for the Post. And needlessly. I don't agree with all that he posted. (For what it's worth, I'm glad to raise deficits for healthcare reform if it drives down costs in the long term, but I think all term limits are antidemocratic.) But I don't think any less of him for posting them.
Thanks to its new policy, though, I do think less of the Post. Or rather—because it believes that we have to be protected from information about its staff's opinions—I now know how much less it thinks of us.
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[...] Times: Washington Post slaps the Twitter handcuffs on its staff [...]
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Does it surprise you, though?
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[...] http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2009/09/29/the-washington-post-slaps-the-twitter-handcuffs-on-its-sta... a few seconds ago from Gwibber [...]
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I know it's not polite to laugh at old people, but hahaha, standing up too quickly? hahaha.
I used to agree with your term limit being anti-democratic, but I've changed my mind in the last few years. Senior members (in terms, not necessarily age) of Congress hold too much power and really aren't contributing to democracy when they only act when getting something in return. Or in this case, Bryd's lack of acting by being in a hospital most the time isn't serving the interests of West Virginia at all.
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But shouldn't it be up to the voters of West Virginia to decide whether they're being properly represented? If they feel their senior congresspeople are too powerful and aren't acting on behalf of the citizens, they'll get voted out.
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[...] http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2009/09/29/the-washington-post-slaps-the-twitter-handcuffs-on-its-sta... a few seconds ago from IdentiFox [...]
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But that day is over, and the Post only hurts its brand by handcuffing its writers on Twitter.
.
The Post hurts it brand by handcuffing its paper to the movers and shakers and lobbyists that run D.C.
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These people have failed this country these last 9 years.
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Frankly, the Post deserves to go bankrupt for what they've done. As does the Republican party, and the Republican party-lite (aka the DLC).
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[...] The Washington Post Slaps the Twitter Handcuffs on Its Staff [...]
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I can't disagree more forcefull or more strongly with the opinion in this article. I do NOT want the reporter's opinions. I don't CARE about the reporter's opinions. Call me Joe Friday, all I want are the facts. I am an adult, rational, intelligent and fully capable of making my own opinions based on unbiased fact. When I read bias in an article purporting to be 'news', I instantly doubt the veracity, sincerity and motives of the author and the organization for which they work.
The truth of the matter is that there are far too many people out there posting opinions and damn little fact anymore. Biased articles are as useful as wings on a canoe. No matter how fast you try to get it to go, it'll never fly in the face of reason.
Journalism has really never been about unbiased news reporting. Neither, in fact, has it ever really been about presenting the news. It's always been money-based "info-tanement" for the masses who watch or read the news basically for the weather and the sports scores.
On the other hand, one can hope one of these days a reporter would write an article and allow the reader, for a change, to form their own opinions rather than trying to pursuade the masses with prosaic oratory presented as 'news'. Being dispassionate in one's reporting, striving for objectivity in the details and being neutral in the presentation are what I look for. Generally, media is too biased already and now when one place tries to muffle its reporters opinions, dissent in the ranks breaks out.
I have no sympathy for those who would rather report their feelings than the facts or are ethically incapable of separating one from the other. I don't disagree that reporters are entitled to their opinions and certainly have no problem with them expressing those opinions IN THE PROPER VENUE. But for everyday reporting, impromptu, and sudden as Twits make it, if they can't stick to the facts, maybe they should opt for being political speech writers rather than journalists.
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He's not saying that reporters should report anything other than facts. He is saying that reporters should be open about their beliefs, because oftentimes an individual's beliefs will cause them to report the facts in a different light, whether they express those beliefs openly or not.
Think of it this way: if you're watching a news report, and all a bad reporter is telling you is that the President's health care plan will cost a lot of money. He doesn't say anything about the plan helping millions of people receive needed health care, and he doesn't say anything about the potential for driving down costs down the road. He's being truthful: he's giving the fact of the matter that health care overhaul with a government option will cost a lot of money. Would you, as a rational, intelligent, fully capable adult, be able to make an unbiased decision based on what was reported? No, of course not. If you knew that the bad reporter voted straight-line Republican and regularly attended Tea Party rallies, it would help you make a better decision regarding what he was reporting.
Now contrast that with a good reporter, who also voted straight-line Republican and regularly attended Tea Party rallies, but reported both the potential positives and negatives of the President's health care plan, along with what people from the breadth of the political spectrum are saying, and pointing out that there are also a lot of unknowns about the plan.
Both the good and bad reporter will report how they will whether you know their politics or not. If you know their politics, and you see the good reporter reporting facts that hurt her political stance, you can be confident that you're getting a better report.
(Personal disclosure: I'm definitely conservative... not quite party-line Republican, but close enough that most on the far left wouldn't care about the difference.)
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> ...you do not want to get your news from idiots.
Why ever not, if it is indeed reported with high fidelity, i.e. ceteris paribus?
I wonder what the writer has to say about, say, a Judge of the Supreme Court declaring himself to be a firm believer that women are better qualified to be airline pilots than men, or that bronze-cheeked children are more precious than those with pockmarks? That's just his opinion, surely, and, as long as he is faithful to the law, it should not hinder him from serving society.
Not just justice, but justice seen - i.e. credible - to be done.
This is why we have ritual, why Her Majesty wears a crown.
> It means being truthful and fair about
> your area of coverage, even if doing so
> hurts the causes you support.This probably should justify, in the author's opinion, journalists driving over the bodies of the dead and dying to take a photograph of a much bigger (or at least, more photogenic) atrocity.
This is contradictory. The author calls for journalists to have opinions, but then suggests they should not be loathe to surrender (indeed, harm) causes they hold dear.
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"I wonder what the writer has to say about, say, a Judge of the Supreme Court declaring himself to be a firm believer that women are better qualified to be airline pilots than men, or that bronze-cheeked children are more precious than those with pockmarks?"
I'd prefer that the judge stated these beliefs, so that we could take them into consideration--rather than that he have those beliefs but keep them a secret. In other words, it is the substance of the beliefs, not the fact of their expression, that makes them troubling. If they went unexpressed, it would not make his judgment any better.
Just so with journalists. Journalists, not being robots, have opinions and beliefs like anyone else, whether anyone likes it or not. Professionalism and integrity require that they produce fair and impartial work regardless of their own opinions--not that they somehow hypnotize themselves not to have opinions, which is impossible in any case. If a bias is harmful, a hidden bias is only more so.
I know that some people simply prefer to maintain the appearance that journalists hold no opinion, but it is not the job of journalism to maintain fictions.
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> I'd prefer that the judge stated these beliefs, so that we
> could take them into consideration--rather than that
> he have those beliefs but keep them a secret.
> In other words, it is the substance of the beliefs, not
> the fact of their expression, that makes them troubling.I am not certain I can agree with this. Unexpressed thoughts are the sole possession of the woman or man in whose head they arise. Once they are expressed, however, one expects them to be stood by, or at least, owned up to. It is this "expectation" that is my point.
Appearances matter. If a judge (I seem to be having a legal-analogy day), repeatedly assures me (as an accused) and everyone else that he has always thought that Limponians (assume that I am from the noble Kingdom of Limponia) are nothing but trouble, and simultaneously that this opinion of his is not going to influence his examination of the evidence, and then goes on to convict me, I don't think that most onlookers will feel that justice has been done. And that transparency should be one of the key goals of any justice system.
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If the anti-Limponian judge were to produce evidence of him judging against his stated personal bias, I would have no issue with him convicting you. Now look at it the other way: if he has always thought that Limponians are nothing but trouble, but never shared that belief, it might take longer for the system to catch on to him regularly and unfairly ruling against Limponians.
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"And that transparency should be one of the key goals of any justice system."
See, to my way of thinking, knowing where a journalist is coming from promotes transparency, and policies like the Post's result in *less* transparency. But reasonable people can disagree.
In any event, this points up one dilemma for an institution like the Post; it may not be possible for it to please both readers who expect greater openness and transparency through media like Twitter, and its longtime readers (obviously I don't know if you are one) who want it to maintain the print-era boundaries on how and what its reporters and editors should write.
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I don't deny that journalists should have opinions, or even that is possible for any reasonably free human to not have opinions, but that these opinions should a) not be used to influence the presentation, selection and context of any given news story and b) not give the appearance that any such skullduggery took place, or could have taken place.
I imagine that most people (including you, Dave and James) will agree with "a".
The essence of my argument is that "b" is as important as "a".
Here's an attempt at justifying my position. I, for one, cannot really defend the proposition that a few thousand US soldiers are deployed in Afghanistan, or that the earth is indeed a sphere and that smoking causes cancer, for these are things that I have no personal knowledge of. Given my limited lifespan, energy and capacity, I am happy to believe others of my tribe, or even those who exchange smoke signals with other tribes across the oceans. So it is already with a certain sense of distrust (or, to put in nicely, a sense that not all necessarily is the absolute truth) that I approach any source of information.
Now, if I read a news report by an openly (i.e. not just that she does not deny it, but actively shares it) pro-life, anti-same-gender-marriage etc. reporter and this report is on the Roman Church, I will feel more inclined to reject not just the purported facts but also the insinuations and rumor. The report has lost some of its "value" for me.
Let's take the other case, where our reporter is a firm believer in the RCC, but keeps this to herself. Remember, in both cases, our reporter is scrupulously fair. Now, I will take what she writes on good faith, and believe more of it than in the previous case. This case appears to be better for both the writer and the reader.
Hence my stand that reporters should not make a public showcase of their own opinions, unless the platform is explicitly designed for it.
Here's another reason: let's say that our reporter, a strong, vociferous supporter of the RCC, uncovers a "story" on child-abuse in the RCC, I will probably feel more inclined to believe it. (And I think this is not in the interests of truth)
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I think my points (and I'm guessing, to an extent, James' as well) is summed up like this: disclosure of bias and belief will only hurt bad reporters. Good reporters will be able to show a history of unbiased reporting despite personal beliefs, while bad reporters won't be able to do the same. But what about the fair, honest reporting that happens to coincide with the good reporter's bias? Wouldn't critics just point out the good reporter's bias and claim bad reporting? Well yes, but critics already do that anyway. "What, you write for Fox News/MSNBC? I completely distrust anything that comes from your conservative/liberal biased reporting!"
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The Post has been doing it's best over the last couple years to be as irrelevant as possible. This is just another step.
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[...] magazine’s James Poniewozik calls the policy “misguided.” The WashPost policy, he writes, “manages to get both social media and journalism [...]
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[...] Kurtz, citing coverage in Decoder and elsewhere, said the newspapers used to get frantic about their reporters mouthing off on television and now [...]
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[...] The Washington Post has also cracked down on its reporters this week, implementing a policy that has New Media critics shaking their heads. The policy was implemented after Raju Narisetti, one of the Post’s managing editors, posted two (rather innocuous) political opinions on his Twitter account. He thought he was making offhand remarks to an audience of 90 friends. The Post saw it as a challenge to its integrity – a dangerous blurring of the lines between news coverage and personal opinion. [...]
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[...] a new rule for its journalists in which they are forbidden from posting their opinions on Twitter. A Time Magazine blog reported the infraction of censorship bestowed upon Post journalists and [...]
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[...] objectivity on a subject a journalist has studied closely, even possible? As James Poniewozik writes, “any person who immersed him or herself in a vital, contentious subject all day and formed no [...]
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