7 ms·

Social Media Guidelines for the Times Newsroom

50 points by coloneltcb 9y ago

weinzierl 9y ago
> We consider all social media activity by our journalists to come under this policy. While you may think that your Facebook page, Twitter feed, Instagram, Snapchat or other social media accounts are private zones, separate from your role at The Times, in fact everything we post or "like" online is to some degree public. --------------------------------------------------------------------- in fact everything we post or "like" online is to some degree public. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This is good advice for everyone. In fact, I'm not sure if 'post or "like"' isn't even a too narrow definition. For example "stories clicked" is probably a much more interesting metric than "likes", and we can never be sure that this data doesn't become public.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  Even things in your newsfeed that you pause over for half a second without clicking on can be tracked and made public also.
  - jdoliner 9y ago
    Things you never saw at all could be made public too. How would you prove them wrong? And would it even matter if you did? It seems like a fools errand to worry about this, even if you do everything right you can still get just as screwed.
- danso 9y ago
  A funny, recent example of how likes/follows can be tracked: A Baltimore Sun reporter who helped expose a fraudulent journalist was messaged by a Twitter user who purported to be one of the fraudulent journalist's sources. A look at who that Twitter user followed made the claim very unconvincing: https://twitter.com/justin_fenton/status/839663972357926912 https://twitter.com/justin_fenton/status/839663972357926912
coloneltcb 9y ago
this is so misguided. This sums up my feelings exactly https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status/918864859537829889 https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status/918864859537829889 Be circumspect. Cover your tracks. Don't show you're biased. Be biased in private!
- nipplesurvey 9y ago
  good message, but when delivered by someone who writes for the post it loses some credibility
koolba 9y ago
From their new guidelines: > In social media posts, our journalists must not express partisan opinions, promote political views, endorse candidates, make offensive comments or do anything else that undercuts The Times’s journalistic reputation. Is this for real or was it an erroneously early April Fools gag?
- zaroth 9y ago
  Consider what's happened to the NFL with the anthem protests. By not putting a strong policy in place (or rather, not consistently enforcing the policy they had) to avoid politics in the workplace, the brand has been damaged and the product they are selling has been hijacked. Employers need to carefully weigh the pros/cons of letting employees participate in politics while they are representing the company. In the NFL that would include time on the field. For the Times they judge that to include all social media use -- a clearly much higher bar brought on by journalistic responsibilities which hits at the core value of NYTs entire service.
  - wfo 9y ago
    Or you can view it as a high-profile step in an ongoing employer power creep. When you work for a company, how much of your life does that company own? Do you have any rights as a private citizen at all if you have an employer? Can they tell you what to say in your off time? Can they tell you who to vote for? Whether or not to stand when a certain song is being played? Whether or not you can own a gun? Which political organizations to join? How about where to eat? Who to be friends with? What conferences and meetups to attend? Whether or not to smoke and drink alcohol? How much to exercise? When and where to pee and to surrender your bodily fluids (step over here for this mandatory drug test, please)? Can they own the ideas that you think of when you are not working, like they do in tech? The most fascist governments in all of human history would salivate at the chance to exert this much control over their people. While here if you disobey, you are not sent to jail or killed, instead you lose your livelihood and health care, which for the poor approaches a similar end result.
    - zghst 9y ago
rdtsc 9y ago
> If our journalists are perceived as biased or if they engage in editorializing on social media, that can undercut the credibility of the entire newsroom. Continue to be biased. No problem there. Just don't make the mistake of showing that bias too much. > We can effectively pull back the curtain and invite readers to witness, and potentially contribute to, our reporting. We can also reach new audiences. Don't lift the curtain too much. Or people will start paying attention to what's behind it. That's really straight from the Wizard of Oz. A Freudian slip perhaps. But it is true in a way. To manufacture consent effectively, there has to be a minimal veneer of impartiality. Someone glancing at them in passing should be able to say "Look, the free and unbiased press at work".
thatfrenchguy 9y ago
> If our journalists are perceived as biased The point of journalism is to be biased, no-one is neutral. Pretending to be neutral is a huge issue, because it means as a person you can't see your own biases.
- toastking 9y ago
  This has especially been an issue at the Times as of late. Their desire to be neutral on the coverage of the Google Memo led to them quoting misogynists word for word without any commentary.
- blowski 9y ago
  I think the BBC does a good job of being as neutral as reasonably possible. They do it by being equally biased against everyone. Obviously, they’re not perfect, but listening to people like John Humphries it’s not obvious what their political persuasions actually are. Oftentimes, all political parties accuse them of being biased.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- cirgue 9y ago
  > Pretending to be neutral is a huge issue, because it means as a person you can't see your own biases. There is a difference between making an effort to remain as unbiased as possible and pretending to not be biased or partisan. There is a difference between making a good faith effort at objectivity and claiming complete objectivity. Saying 'well everyone is biased so holding ourselves and others accountable to a standard of objectivity is bad and we should stop it" is a great way to make sure that the Kelleyanne Conways of the world get a platform.
- zaroth 9y ago
  > The point of journalism is to be biased I can certainly see why you might think that with how MSM reports today. An unbiased human works about as well as an untrained neural network. But journalistic integrity requires objectivity despite any bias you might approach a story with. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_objectivity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_objectivity
toastking 9y ago
This honestly seems like it's taking their reader's intelligence for granted. When people see content from the NYT's they know the point of view it's coming from. I get that the actions of Time's reporters reflects on the paper as a whole but pretending that reader's don't understand that journalists have opinions takes them for granted.
- foota 9y ago
  I believe you're misusing take for granted here. To take for granted is to assume that something is true. So your first sentence would read "This honestly seems like... assuming their readers are intelligent" which seems to be the opposite of your point.
rndmwlk 9y ago
>As you can see, we have tried to strike a balance. ...I can't see that.
misterHN 9y ago
The New York Times should shut down. Affiliation with social media is equivalent to drinking poison.
jdoliner 9y ago
Judging by these guidelines I see no evidence that NYT actually wants their staff to be unbiased. Only to appear unbiased. This, I presume, is because it allows them to present biased opinions as objective truths. An art which the NYT has perfected over the years.
- quadrangle 9y ago
  It's more likely that they just are biased in the sense that organizations and people have bias. There's little basis to assert that they are consciously, intentionally biased and trying to hide it. All their efforts to appear unbiased probably go along with a desire to be unbiased. Actually achieving some mythical unbiased view is much harder than some guidelines to avoid amplifying impressions of bias. In short: even when they present biased opinions as objective truth, they don't have whole meta-conspiracy around planning to do that. Nobody is writing these social-media guidelines thinking "this will better allow us to get away with presenting our political angle as objective truth" or anything like that.
  - tanderson92 9y ago
    > There's little basis to assert that they are consciously, intentionally biased and trying to hide it. You might consider reading "Manufactured Consent", by Noam Chomsky.
    - tanderson92 9y ago
      Or don't believe me or Noam Chomsky (thanks down-voters), take it from their own words. http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003512.html http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003512.html
    - quadrangle 9y ago
      I'm aware of Chomsky's thesis and basically agree with it. My comment is totally aligned with the thesis as I understand it. Chomsky's thesis doesn't suggest that entities like the NYT are intentionally biased and crafty in hiding it. His thesis suggests that the basic nature of news media as we know it, the economic models, social structures, etc. inherently work in a fashion that reinforces mainstream thought and rejects challenges to it. I think Chomsky is right. My point is that the NYT is behaving exactly as Chomsky would expect including my suggestion that they aren't consciously aiming to be biased and hide it. They exist in a broader context where they can't even see their own bias (which is common in many cases, even outside of this topic of journalism).
cpr 9y ago
It's naive to think that Operation Mockingbird (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird) isn't continuing to this day. These major organs of the media function simply as a fourth branch of government.
elandybarr 9y ago
For those who do not have the context, senior figures at The Times were caught on camera talking about ties to people associated with the Democrat Party and talking about working closely with an individual at YouTube to favorably curate their front page. This individual also discussed a close personal relationship with former FBI Director James Comey. If you want to watch the videos for yourself, look up "Project Veritas", and you can see the footage that likely prompted this post.
- danso 9y ago
  I doubt that that undercover string precipitated this policy, which no doubt took longer than a week to formulate. For starters, the thing you mentioned was chat taped during an undercover sting, of which social media guidelines would not govern.
dmckeon 9y ago
The phrase: > our journalists is used 14 times. Do the serfs go with the land, or can they have any private/personal online presence? I get that the Times is using "our journalists" as a shorthand for "journalists employed by the Times" or "people who work at the Times' newsrooms" but this seems like an exclusion of many significant personal opinions from online spaces. It also seems to be a shift from journalists having both a private persona and a separate public body of work to a single public persona who is always and constantly expected to be on the public stage - like an on-call physician, a well-known trial lawyer, a politician, a celebrity, or an actor. We might expect that shift for a small percentage of the people in journalism - the ones whose names might be recognized by any reader or viewer - but do we want it for all journalists?
danso 9y ago
> On that same note, we strongly discourage our journalists from making customer service complaints on social media. While you may believe that you have a legitimate gripe, you’ll most likely be given special consideration because of your status as a Times reporter or editor. One of the more sensible precautions IMO. It's very easy to get a company or institution to acknowledge to your complaints when you pull the "Do you know who I work for?" card. Difficult to be unbiased when things go your way.
- matt4077 9y ago
  It's also the sort of old-school professional integrity that feels almost out-of-place these days. I mean–Imagine a life of constant vigilance against, for example, the corrosive corruption that sneaks in via the power of your employer's name to get your billing snafu at Comcast escalated. And then every actual contact with the general population is just a litany of insults, attempts to tie your work to some grand conspiracy "the media" is engaged in, or accusations of taking money from the "global warming scientists-environmentalist complex". C.f: the idea that the New York Times (first published 1851) is a CIA front operation, founded by a 1950's propaganda effort. Peddled downthreat (hopefully) with the "you're naive if you don't believe" shtick.

50 points by coloneltcb 9y ago

> We consider all social media activity by our journalists to come under this policy. While you may think that your Facebook page, Twitter feed, Instagram, Snapchat or other social media accounts are private zones, separate from your role at The Times, in fact everything we post or "like" online is to some degree public. --------------------------------------------------------------------- in fact everything we post or "like" online is to some degree public. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This is good advice for everyone. In fact, I'm not sure if 'post or "like"' isn't even a too narrow definition. For example "stories clicked" is probably a much more interesting metric than "likes", and we can never be sure that this data doesn't become public.

Alex3917 9y ago
Even things in your newsfeed that you pause over for half a second without clicking on can be tracked and made public also.
- jdoliner 9y ago
  Things you never saw at all could be made public too. How would you prove them wrong? And would it even matter if you did? It seems like a fools errand to worry about this, even if you do everything right you can still get just as screwed.
danso 9y ago
A funny, recent example of how likes/follows can be tracked: A Baltimore Sun reporter who helped expose a fraudulent journalist was messaged by a Twitter user who purported to be one of the fraudulent journalist's sources. A look at who that Twitter user followed made the claim very unconvincing: https://twitter.com/justin_fenton/status/839663972357926912 https://twitter.com/justin_fenton/status/839663972357926912

coloneltcb 9y ago

this is so misguided. This sums up my feelings exactly https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status/918864859537829889 https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status/918864859537829889 Be circumspect. Cover your tracks. Don't show you're biased. Be biased in private!

nipplesurvey 9y ago
good message, but when delivered by someone who writes for the post it loses some credibility

koolba 9y ago

From their new guidelines: > In social media posts, our journalists must not express partisan opinions, promote political views, endorse candidates, make offensive comments or do anything else that undercuts The Times’s journalistic reputation. Is this for real or was it an erroneously early April Fools gag?

zaroth 9y ago
Consider what's happened to the NFL with the anthem protests. By not putting a strong policy in place (or rather, not consistently enforcing the policy they had) to avoid politics in the workplace, the brand has been damaged and the product they are selling has been hijacked. Employers need to carefully weigh the pros/cons of letting employees participate in politics while they are representing the company. In the NFL that would include time on the field. For the Times they judge that to include all social media use -- a clearly much higher bar brought on by journalistic responsibilities which hits at the core value of NYTs entire service.
- wfo 9y ago
  Or you can view it as a high-profile step in an ongoing employer power creep. When you work for a company, how much of your life does that company own? Do you have any rights as a private citizen at all if you have an employer? Can they tell you what to say in your off time? Can they tell you who to vote for? Whether or not to stand when a certain song is being played? Whether or not you can own a gun? Which political organizations to join? How about where to eat? Who to be friends with? What conferences and meetups to attend? Whether or not to smoke and drink alcohol? How much to exercise? When and where to pee and to surrender your bodily fluids (step over here for this mandatory drug test, please)? Can they own the ideas that you think of when you are not working, like they do in tech? The most fascist governments in all of human history would salivate at the chance to exert this much control over their people. While here if you disobey, you are not sent to jail or killed, instead you lose your livelihood and health care, which for the poor approaches a similar end result.
  - zghst 9y ago

rdtsc 9y ago

> If our journalists are perceived as biased or if they engage in editorializing on social media, that can undercut the credibility of the entire newsroom. Continue to be biased. No problem there. Just don't make the mistake of showing that bias too much. > We can effectively pull back the curtain and invite readers to witness, and potentially contribute to, our reporting. We can also reach new audiences. Don't lift the curtain too much. Or people will start paying attention to what's behind it. That's really straight from the Wizard of Oz. A Freudian slip perhaps. But it is true in a way. To manufacture consent effectively, there has to be a minimal veneer of impartiality. Someone glancing at them in passing should be able to say "Look, the free and unbiased press at work".

thatfrenchguy 9y ago

> If our journalists are perceived as biased The point of journalism is to be biased, no-one is neutral. Pretending to be neutral is a huge issue, because it means as a person you can't see your own biases.

toastking 9y ago
This has especially been an issue at the Times as of late. Their desire to be neutral on the coverage of the Google Memo led to them quoting misogynists word for word without any commentary.
blowski 9y ago
I think the BBC does a good job of being as neutral as reasonably possible. They do it by being equally biased against everyone. Obviously, they’re not perfect, but listening to people like John Humphries it’s not obvious what their political persuasions actually are. Oftentimes, all political parties accuse them of being biased.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cirgue 9y ago
> Pretending to be neutral is a huge issue, because it means as a person you can't see your own biases. There is a difference between making an effort to remain as unbiased as possible and pretending to not be biased or partisan. There is a difference between making a good faith effort at objectivity and claiming complete objectivity. Saying 'well everyone is biased so holding ourselves and others accountable to a standard of objectivity is bad and we should stop it" is a great way to make sure that the Kelleyanne Conways of the world get a platform.
zaroth 9y ago
> The point of journalism is to be biased I can certainly see why you might think that with how MSM reports today. An unbiased human works about as well as an untrained neural network. But journalistic integrity requires objectivity despite any bias you might approach a story with. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_objectivity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_objectivity

toastking 9y ago

This honestly seems like it's taking their reader's intelligence for granted. When people see content from the NYT's they know the point of view it's coming from. I get that the actions of Time's reporters reflects on the paper as a whole but pretending that reader's don't understand that journalists have opinions takes them for granted.

foota 9y ago
I believe you're misusing take for granted here. To take for granted is to assume that something is true. So your first sentence would read "This honestly seems like... assuming their readers are intelligent" which seems to be the opposite of your point.

rndmwlk 9y ago

>As you can see, we have tried to strike a balance. ...I can't see that.

misterHN 9y ago

The New York Times should shut down. Affiliation with social media is equivalent to drinking poison.

jdoliner 9y ago

Judging by these guidelines I see no evidence that NYT actually wants their staff to be unbiased. Only to appear unbiased. This, I presume, is because it allows them to present biased opinions as objective truths. An art which the NYT has perfected over the years.

quadrangle 9y ago
It's more likely that they just are biased in the sense that organizations and people have bias. There's little basis to assert that they are consciously, intentionally biased and trying to hide it. All their efforts to appear unbiased probably go along with a desire to be unbiased. Actually achieving some mythical unbiased view is much harder than some guidelines to avoid amplifying impressions of bias. In short: even when they present biased opinions as objective truth, they don't have whole meta-conspiracy around planning to do that. Nobody is writing these social-media guidelines thinking "this will better allow us to get away with presenting our political angle as objective truth" or anything like that.
- tanderson92 9y ago
  > There's little basis to assert that they are consciously, intentionally biased and trying to hide it. You might consider reading "Manufactured Consent", by Noam Chomsky.
  - tanderson92 9y ago
    Or don't believe me or Noam Chomsky (thanks down-voters), take it from their own words. http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003512.html http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003512.html
  - quadrangle 9y ago
    I'm aware of Chomsky's thesis and basically agree with it. My comment is totally aligned with the thesis as I understand it. Chomsky's thesis doesn't suggest that entities like the NYT are intentionally biased and crafty in hiding it. His thesis suggests that the basic nature of news media as we know it, the economic models, social structures, etc. inherently work in a fashion that reinforces mainstream thought and rejects challenges to it. I think Chomsky is right. My point is that the NYT is behaving exactly as Chomsky would expect including my suggestion that they aren't consciously aiming to be biased and hide it. They exist in a broader context where they can't even see their own bias (which is common in many cases, even outside of this topic of journalism).

cpr 9y ago

It's naive to think that Operation Mockingbird (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird) isn't continuing to this day. These major organs of the media function simply as a fourth branch of government.

elandybarr 9y ago

For those who do not have the context, senior figures at The Times were caught on camera talking about ties to people associated with the Democrat Party and talking about working closely with an individual at YouTube to favorably curate their front page. This individual also discussed a close personal relationship with former FBI Director James Comey. If you want to watch the videos for yourself, look up "Project Veritas", and you can see the footage that likely prompted this post.

danso 9y ago
I doubt that that undercover string precipitated this policy, which no doubt took longer than a week to formulate. For starters, the thing you mentioned was chat taped during an undercover sting, of which social media guidelines would not govern.

dmckeon 9y ago

The phrase: > our journalists is used 14 times. Do the serfs go with the land, or can they have any private/personal online presence? I get that the Times is using "our journalists" as a shorthand for "journalists employed by the Times" or "people who work at the Times' newsrooms" but this seems like an exclusion of many significant personal opinions from online spaces. It also seems to be a shift from journalists having both a private persona and a separate public body of work to a single public persona who is always and constantly expected to be on the public stage - like an on-call physician, a well-known trial lawyer, a politician, a celebrity, or an actor. We might expect that shift for a small percentage of the people in journalism - the ones whose names might be recognized by any reader or viewer - but do we want it for all journalists?

danso 9y ago

> On that same note, we strongly discourage our journalists from making customer service complaints on social media. While you may believe that you have a legitimate gripe, you’ll most likely be given special consideration because of your status as a Times reporter or editor. One of the more sensible precautions IMO. It's very easy to get a company or institution to acknowledge to your complaints when you pull the "Do you know who I work for?" card. Difficult to be unbiased when things go your way.

matt4077 9y ago
It's also the sort of old-school professional integrity that feels almost out-of-place these days. I mean–Imagine a life of constant vigilance against, for example, the corrosive corruption that sneaks in via the power of your employer's name to get your billing snafu at Comcast escalated. And then every actual contact with the general population is just a litany of insults, attempts to tie your work to some grand conspiracy "the media" is engaged in, or accusations of taking money from the "global warming scientists-environmentalist complex". C.f: the idea that the New York Times (first published 1851) is a CIA front operation, founded by a 1950's propaganda effort. Peddled downthreat (hopefully) with the "you're naive if you don't believe" shtick.