As for the main topic, the Times is definitely going overboard. I’m glad I’m not a journalist. I’m a high school teacher, and school districts across the country are making wonderful “Social Media Policies” (which are, by the letter, much stricter than the Times reaction to Rudoren’s tweets).

But really they’re CYA policies for school districts that can’t be enforced (most cross of them clearly cross the border of free speech) and won’t be enforced unless a teacher does something ridiculous (like the teacher in NJ who made bigoted remarks about gay students).

There’s nothing wrong with journalists having opinions. We all know they have them anyway, and trying to pretend like they don’t is just stupid.

Olaf Storbeck (Handelsblatt), Lisa Pollack (FT) and Binyamin Appelbaum (NY Times) cover U.S. and European business, economic and public policy news. They are active on Twitter. They seem deliberately neutral, yet responsive and spontaneous in their public Twitter interactions.

I am so appreciative! The opportunity to glimpse the person behind the news story by-line has made a big difference to me. It has motivated me to follow current events more closely than I ever did before (even though I knew should have been more diligent in the past). I am grateful, and hope sensible social media activity by reporters will continue.

Nevertheless, I believe that you are correct, for a journalist covering very politically and emotionally charged news. Even if Jodi Rudoren’s coverage were equally critical, or praising, of all sides, there would be problems. That’s because in each isolated instance, on Twitter or Facebook, we only see that particular comment or update. NY Times’ own editors can look at the sum total, over time, but it is not so easy (or rather, so likely) that the public will do similarly.

Trust in journalists and the media is VERY important! There is already distrust, sometimes unnecessarily so. The public shouldn’t need to vet journalists for integrity and unbiased coverage, and is unlikely to do so.

I really like mainstream media and traditional journalism. I don’t like Huffington Post. I do like lots of Giga Om (Ms. Higginbotham is AMAZING)… and I’m starting to trust Mathew Ingram too, as a consistent reporter. Social media can reinforce the effectiveness of news media, when used with care, but that’s another topic.

The NYT doesn’t like it that we can see the bias of one of its writers. She’s wet, she thought she could write what came instinctively, whether it was racist and bigoted or de-humanizing or not, she’s quickly learning she must learn the script at the NYT.

Yes, Cry for Israeli’s in fear, while surrounded by actual death of babies in Gaza where you’re meant to be reporting from, et al, but don’t be so obvious to let readers know what you actually think of the “other” people, those who speak that foreign A-Rab language, etc!

Interesting timeline of the evolution of the story/incident : http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/ruing-rudorens-facebook-posts-nyt-assigns-her-a-social-media-editor.html

More generally, this is why Social Media has its benefits, people can easily communicate and converse with those in the media – for some reason they needed FB/Twitter to do this rather than web1.0 email – we get dialogue, which enables discourse, which enables empathy, which begets progress (and hopefully, harmony) but that’s on a person-2-person basis; commercially, old-style media is almost all about control, and so unless you’re going to be liberal in the permissions granted to your staff, you’re fighting a paradoxical uphill struggle against someone spouting impulsively their personal thoughts for what retains as persistent global publishing.

nb. see the complete killing-off of MYspace by Murdoch/newsCorp moribund decision-making processes, i.e. control.

jjj is completely right about soc.nets for commercial businesses, but is the solution to be honest about what NYT writers really think and let them declare their biases for all to appreciate, or as the NYT is deciding to do, give us a varnished version of actual facts and their own editorial agenda, however corrupted?

Yours kindly,

SR