New Delhi: The New York Times is not the first media outlet facing criticism on social media for allegedly firing an employee over a social media post.
Lauren Wolfe, a freelance editor working with the NYT’s ‘Live’ section, tweeted on 19 January that she got “chills” watching US President Joe Biden’s plane land outside Washington ahead of his inauguration. A few days later, Wolfe was let go and she has since deleted the tweet.
The Times subsequently clarified that “we did not terminate someone’s employment over a single tweet” but made no further comment about the exact reason why Wolfe lost her job.
The NYT has been in a similar situation before, where it was forced to take action against an employee over a social media post. So have the BBC and The Washington Post. Closer home, employees of The Quint and India Today Group have reportedly found themselves facing their employers’ ire for their social media activity.
These instances come in the backdrop of several media organisations framing explicit social media guidelines in a bid to ensure personal opinions of journalists don’t hurt the image of the institution.
With social media emerging as an important tool for news sharing, and journalists courting ever-growing online followings, media organisations have been wary of drawing allegations of partisan coverage because of personal opinions expressed by their employees.
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Many such instances
In 2019, NYT demoted then deputy editor Jonathan Wesiman after he posted messages about race and politics that the paper saw as “serious lapses in judgment”.
In January 2020, The Washington Post suspended reporter Felicia Sonmez because, amid the tributes that followed US basketball star Kobe Bryant’s death in an aircrash, she posted an article that had details of sexual assault allegations against him dating back to 2003. She was later reinstated.
Across the Atlantic, in Britain, the BBC has faced several uncomfortable moments over tweets by its staff. In May 2019, for example, presenter Danny Baker was sacked after he was accused of mocking UK royal Meghan Markle’s racial heritage — her mother is of African-American origin — in a tweet.
In 2018, BBC’s Match of the Day presenter and football star Gary Lineker was criticised by BBC cricket host Jonathan Agnew for tweeting his opinions on Brexit and then British PM Theresa May. Agnew told Lineker that he should observe the network’s editorial guidelines.
In September 2020, Bobby Friction of the BBC Asian Network described the current British government as a “festival of faeces”. He deleted the tweet after his employer reportedly intervened.
Indian publications have also faced similar controversies. In February 2018, India Today Group allegedly fired an employee because of a tweet where she criticised media promoters for turning a “blind eye to hate-mongering, fake news spreading” of TV anchors and editors.
Angshukanta Chakraborty, former political editor of DailyO, claimed she was fired after she refused to delete the tweet. Another journalist reportedly lost the job offer after a reply to a tweet about Union Home Minister Amit Shah contracting swine flu was deemed inappropriate in January 2019.
At the time, the journalist, Stuti Mishra, was serving her notice period with The Quint. The digital news outlet apologised for the comment in a subsequent tweet and said “due action will be taken”.
Social media policies
These incidents have created a tense situation for journalists and media houses, with both uncertain about how exactly to respond to the challenges posted by the wide visibility offered on social media.
According to a 2015 report on the open platform Medium, as many as 25 per cent of the verified accounts on Twitter belong to journalists — constituting the largest share of verified accounts on Twitter, higher even than sports personalities.
The tussle between a journalist’s right to express opinions and media organisations’ bid to protect their image has led companies to look towards remedial action. Most leading news publications around the world — from the NYT and Washington Post in the US to the BBC and Guardian in the UK — as well as in India now have a separate section on social media policies in their code of conduct. Some of them are in the public domain, while some are internally circulated.
ThePrint has also issued guidelines for its staff that lay down a basic test for anything journalists want to say on social media — nothing that would be unpublishable on ThePrint’s platforms will be written on social media.
In updated guidelines issued in November 2020, the NYT called on employees to take “extra care to avoid expressing partisan opinions or editorialising on issues that The Times is covering”.
The NYT pointed out how social media presents potential risks for the newspaper. “If our journalists are perceived as biased or if they engage in editorialising on social media, that can undercut the credibility of the entire newsroom,” it said.
The paper asked its employees not to express partisan opinions, promote political views, endorse candidates, make offensive comments or do anything else that undercuts the newspaper’s journalistic reputation. It also discouraged its employees from making customer service complaints on social media.
The Washington Post has similar guidelines. In its policy, the Post says that, while using social media networks, “nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment”.
BBC updated its social media policy in October 2020. It says there will be “tougher guidelines” for some staff in news, senior leadership, and presenters who have a significant public profile. The guidelines also state that staff should avoid disclaimers such “My views, not the BBC’s” in their Twitter bios as they serve “no defence against personal expressions of opinion”.
In May 2020, BBC appointed Richard Sambrook, who has worked at the organisation for 30 years and is currently director of journalism of Cardiff University, to review the online behaviour of staff.
In its social media policy, Reuters warns its employees that the distinction between the private and the professional has largely broken down online.
The UK daily The Guardian, meanwhile, says journalists should be careful about blurring fact and opinion and consider carefully how words could be “(mis)interpreted or (mis)represented”.
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“In May 2019, for example, presenter Danny Baker was sacked after he was accused of mocking UK royal Meghan Markle’s racial heritage”
Wrongly-accused, of course.
Danny doesn’t watch the news, doesn’t read newspapers and has no interest in Royals and celebs, so didn’t know anything at all about Meghan, let alone anything about her heritage.
He clearly wouldn’t have posted that photo if he did, hence him removing it 5 minutes later when he found out for the first time that she is mixed-raced.
Unfortunately it’s too little too late for the news media organizations like NYT, WaPo ,The Guardian, The Independent etc., to try to act like they’re non partisan & Unbiased. If you look at how they covered President Trump starting from 2016, makes you wonder why they’re trying do damage control now while their reputation has been in free fall for the last 5 years.
People are more informed now & any attempt from these media organizations to call themselves unbiased would be laughable. To compare, Indian news media is much better. Although partisan media is one of the reasons why Modi is the PM today. But still most of the India media organizations draw a line when it comes to using profane language against politicians.
There’s no such thing called Independent media.