You’re Journalists, Not Influencers
Journalists need to behave professionally on social media
(Written September, 2020)
“#veepstakes,” tweeted The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel with no context and a 5-year-old picture of Joe Biden and now disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. In response, I tweeted asking Weigel if his tweet was productive coming from a journalist in his position. Americans are already forced to sift daily through a barrage of intentional disinformation. Weigel clapped-back, “Sometimes people make jokes on Twitter.” His fans quickly jumped to defend him. They directed so much vitriol my way that I eventually deleted my reply.
Journalists have increasingly blurred the lines between the influence they are accorded as trusted informers and the “influencer”-like power their professionally-linked social media platforms provide them.
“Show some grace,” demanded Tim Alberta, POLITICO’s chief political correspondent, in a now deleted tweet to his 73,000 followers and the world. “Gonna go back to doing my job in a minute — but have VERY little patience for the couch sitters and Twitter clowns today,” whined his colleague Jake Sherman that same August 26th morning. Readers and reporters alike were frustrated with POLITICO’s context-blind coverage of the Republican National Convention. Alberta wrote of how “Melania restored a sense of normalcy” without mentioning her norm-desecrating use of the Rose Garden for partisan political purposes. Sherman, who boasts well over 200,000 followers, was under fire, particularly from his colleagues in media, for dismissing the significance of Hatch Act violations.
No doubt, journalists have been under heightened attack in this Trump moment. They get death threats and some have even been killed. Journalists often receive direct blame from the public for otherwise valid critiques of the news industry at-large.
As an everyday information consumer and a patriotic American, however, I take this online behavior very personally. I was raised to consider journalism a public-service oriented career. At my New York State public high school, we were constantly reminded that the “Fourth Estate” was essential to democracy.
In his tweet lecturing readers, Alberta acknowledged he “meant to note unprecedented use of Rose Garden in [his] write-up of Melania” but was possibly “tired & sloppy.” Sherman simply demanded his critics “shut up and do some reporting, you clowns. and come at me when you have broken some news.” CNN’s Jake Tapper quoted that tweet in support of his fellow Jake, “New screen saver.” A fourth white male reporter, New York Magazine’s Josh Barro, chimed in, “This convention is making a lot of you very annoying.” “I get it,” he followed up in a second tweet, “you have feelings about Melania.” Barro has over 260,000 Twitter followers.
In this time of great uncertainty, the American people need trustworthy information. I rely on journalism every day and, to many, it’s a lifeline. So to be mocked by Josh Barro for caring about a media that normalizes a first lady who famously suggested “she didn’t care” about kids in cages upsets me. To be told to “have grace” by Tim Alberta who admits he failed at his sacred secular task makes me feel hopeless. And to be called names by Jake Sherman makes me worry that journalists are engaging, as Trump would put it for very different reasons, like the “enemy of the people.”
Journalists’ behavior on social media has come under scrutiny since 2016, but there has been little accountability for those whose job it is to hold everyone else accountable.
Publications are right to worry about the damage individual journalists’ online behavior can cause to the credibility of their organization and the industry overall. In 2017, The New York Times announced new Social Media Guidelines. As Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet explained, the guidelines seek to balance an admitted business need to maintain “a vibrant presence on social media” while upholding “the values of our newsroom.” The Washington Post’s social media policy goes even further, noting, “Post journalists must recognize that any content associated with them in an online social network is, for practical purposes, the equivalent of what appears beneath their bylines in the newspaper or on our website.” This is true, especially when you consider most media personalities are “verified” by Twitter and other platforms — adding a layer of apparent legitimacy to their posts.
The majority of Americans say they have lost trust in media. When journalists publicly confront frustrated readers, treat consequential news as a joke, or promote Breitbart to their 1.4 million followers it antagonizes the public their employers claim to serve. As The Times’s Nick Confessore admits, “to the extent my Twitter account is influential or widely read, it is largely because I am employed by The Times.”
Journalists like to remind us “Twitter is not real life,” but their tweets are really undermining the service they have dedicated their lives to — empowering the public with information.
Weigel’s fans insisted that not one of his over 500,000 followers would fail to recognize Elizabeth Holmes or miss his joke. Responses proved otherwise. “Please fill me in. I don’t get any of this. Who is this woman?,” commented one user, “What does she have to do with VP pick?”