Social Media's ramifications

While there has been an obscene increase in the use of social media it is no wonder that there are developing issues that emerge. What happens when a journalist such as Octavia Nasr are being fired for using social media? As long as Nasr's tweet was on one of her own accounts and not CNN's then I do not believe her termination is credible. "Error in judgement does not meet CNN's editorial standards" as long as her tweet does not interfere with her work then I do not see the issue. I can understand if it was on CNN's twitter account because that is not her place to share her personal beliefs, however if it is on her own twitter account this particular case is outrageous.

In David Weigel's case he raged about his dislike for Matt Drudge and Ron Paul on the journalist social media site listserv. As a result it led to Weigel resigning. Weigel has always been known as a hard worker and an important aspect of the Washington Post. I do understand that today we have to worry about journalist and their bias, but I also agree somewhat with a comment Weigel has said to a caller. In an article by the Washington Posts, Weigel stated "I've always been of the belief that you could have opinions and could report anyway. . . . People aren't usually asked to stand or fall on everything they've said in private." This is where the line gets grey. Check out the Washington Post article


Mike Wise SUSPENDED? I find this article intriguing because Mike Wise was simply attempting to prove how obscene social media's influence is on journalism today. I understand he compromised his integrity and jeopardized his position but in my eyes I view his acts as a bold move in order to better the industry. Too often today journalist and citizens trust the internet and even social media sites without checking to see if the source is reliable. In Wise's case he was lucky to only have one month of suspension, but I do not particularly agree that his actions were in fact wrong.

So the question that arises here is what laws protect journalist from termination acts such as these? Web 2.0 has produced a new and exciting world that is quite often blurred and grey when it comes to law. People daily are continuing to rely on this new media as a source of information. Does that qualify a person such as Mike Wise or Octavia Nasr to be held to a higher standard solely because they are respected journalist? These new medias apparently link together the workplace and home, where does a journalist stop being a journalist and are allowed to start writing their opinions?

It was quite entertaining as I searched the internet to find more articles that were relevant to this subject. I found the majority of the "articles" I found were blogs. In fact practically all of them were blogs.