When Personal & Professional Collide: Ethics in the Social Media Era

WHEN PERSONAL &
PROFESSIONAL COLLIDE:
ETHICS IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA ERA

John Bethune
B2BMemes.com

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

“You don’t have to be an emotionless
robot, but you need to act like one.”

Sports Illustrated Writer Fired for Clapping During Daytona 500,
Noah Davis, SportsNewser, March 1, 2011


Traditional
journalistic ethics is
predicated on ﬁrmly
separating the
personal and private
from the
professional and
public.


But in the social media era,

privacy is dying, if not dead.


This is not new.

“You have zero
privacy anyway.
Get over it.”
Flickr.com/webmink --Scott McNealy, 1999


Identity & Reputation

As a result of our “increasing publicness” of social media, identity
and reputation are coming closer and sometimes into conﬂict.
-- Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine,com, March 8, 2011


The personal you
and the professional you
are becoming one and the same.


Ethics in Transition


• If you have your own personal social media accounts, what are
your responsibilities and risks?



• Do the companies we work for need social media policies?




• Do editors need their own personal policies?





• Is transparency more important than objectivity?





• Is transparency more important than objectivity?

• Is real-time, process journalism inherently more personal?


Can Social Media Get You Fired?
“I had been wanting to start a blog for
some time, but I fretted about . . . all
those stories on the news about people
who got ﬁred for writing things on their
blogs.”

--Steven Roll 2010


Dooced
–verb (internet, slang)
Dismissed from one's job as a result of one's
actions on the Internet.

Heather Armstrong, ﬁred
in 2002 for comments
she made on her
personal website,
dooce.com


Could it happen to you?


CNN Producer Says He Was Fired for Blogging



Post Editor Ends Tweets as New Guidelines Are Issued




CNN Fires Octavia Nasr over tweet praising late ayatollah




CNN Fires Octavia Nasr over tweet praising late ayatollah

AP Reporter Reprimanded For Facebook Post


Is the answer a
corporate social media policy?


Is the answer a
corporate social media policy?

Or will it just make things worse?


Reuters gets it right . . .
“The distinction between the private and the
professional has largely broken down online
and you should assume that
your professional and personal social media
activity will be treated as one
no matter how hard you try to keep them
separate.”


. . . and wrong
“The advent of social media does not change
your relationship with the company that
employs you”


The Reality:

The advent of social media doesn’t just
change your relationship with your
employer - it transforms that
relationship.


Associated Press
Q: Why does the AP care or think it
should have a say in what I put on my
social networking feed/page?

A: We all have a stake in upholding the AP’s
reputation for fairness and impartiality, which has
been one of our chief assets for more than 160
years.


News Media Guild

“Parts of the [AP] policy seem to be snufﬁng out
peoples’ First Amendment rights of expression by a
company that wraps itself in the First Amendment.”

--Tony Winton, Guild president


Michael Hyatt, CEO, Thomas Nelson:
5 Arguments Against Social Media Policies



1. Your people can be trusted.




2. Social media are just one more way to communicate.




3. More rules only make your company more bureaucratic.





4. Formal policies only discourage people from participating.





4. Formal policies only discourage people from participating.
5. You probably already have policies that govern behavior.


Journal Register CEO John Paton’s
Three Simple Rules
for Using Social Media


Three Simple Rules

1.


Three Simple Rules

1.

2.


Three Simple Rules

1.

2.

3.


Do you need a personal
social media policy?



• Will you avoid covering the same area as your employer?




• Will you tell your employer about your social media activity?





• Will you discuss your work on your personal accounts?





• Will you discuss your work on your personal accounts?

• Will you engage in your social media while at work?


Transparency

When privacy is dead, transparency becomes more
important than objectivity


Sometimes transparency isn’t too personal. . .


And sometimes it gets very personal


Social Media:
A Different Ethical Standard?

“This disclosure and the interactive nature of
blogging [make the conﬂict of interest
acceptable]. . . . While some may raise
objections, Dow Jones feels the transparency will
give readers a chance to judge my work on its
merits.”


Is Transparency Alone Enough?


Two Views of Transparency
. . . Pro
Henry Blodgett, Business Insider:
“Our policy is to take these opportunities case-by-
case.
If we think travel or an event partially paid for by a
company will help us produce content that our readers
love, we’ll be happy to consider it.
If we think it will lead to us producing crap or ﬂuff or
be a waste of time, we won’t do it.”


Two Views of Transparency
. . . and Con
Felix Salmon, Reuters:

“Failure to disclose freebies like this is very bad;
disclosing them, however, isn’t much better. So the best
solution is to simply refuse to take them.”


THE ETHICS OF REAL-TIME
JOURNALISM


Haskell Wexler, Medium Cool (1969)

In traditional journalism, reporters stand
apart from their personal selves and are
uninvolved in what they report on.


In real-time journalism,
the observer often
becomes a participant

Paid Content 2011 conference.
Photo and tweet by Rex Hammock (@r)


Is Liveblogging Journalism?

The Guardian’s live blog
combined wire service
reports, tweets, YouTube
and livestream video, and
other sources.

Not everyone liked it.


Liveblogging Criticism

“There is no structure and therefore no
sense, and the effect is of being in the
middle of a room full of loud, shouty and
excitable people all yelling at once with
all the phones ringing, the ﬁre alarm
going off and a drunken old boy slurring
in your ear about ‘what it all means.’ ”

--John Symes

Liveblogging Praise

“The liveblog isn't meant to be read
when it's ﬁnished. It's meant to be read
while it's happening. . . . It is a product of
the process-driven mindset . . . It is, as
the very name suggests, a live thing.”

--Adam Tinworth

Process Journalism:

Paying Attention to the Man
Behind the Curtain


Jeff Jarvis on Process Journalism
“Online, the story, the reporting, the knowledge
are never done and never perfect.

“That doesn’t mean that we revel in
imperfection . . . [or] that we have no standards.

“It just means that we do journalism differently.”


Process-Journalism Standards

• Collaboration

• Transparency

• Letting readers into the process

• Saying what we don’t know


Personal or Professional?

The best solution is to be yourself.

If that makes you uneasy, talk with your shrink.

Better yet, blog about it.

-- Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine.com, March 8. 2011


Thank You!

John Bethune
John.Bethune@B2BMemes.com


When Personal & Professional Collide: Ethics in the Social Media Era

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