Associated Press reporter disciplined for Facebook comment
AP put a reprimand letter in the file of one of their reporters who had posted a criticism of the McClatchy executives on his Facebook page. First Amendment lawyers say private-sector employees have little recourse when fired for their statements on social networks. -DB
Wired
June 9, 2009
By David Kravets
An Associated Press reporter’s official reprimand over an innocuous comment on his Facebook page has sparked the ire of union officials. They are now demanding that AP clarify its ethics guidelines and are also urging reporters to watch who they add to their friends lists.
“We have seen about six Facebook problems over the last two months, with employees — maybe managers you have as friends — reporting potential issues to management,” union guild chief Kevin Keane wrote in a memo to union members last week. “You must be careful who you allow on as friends.”
Richard Richtmyer, a Philadelphia-based newsman, set off Tuesday’s tempest with a seemingly harmless comment posted to his Facebook profile late last month criticizing the executive management of newspaper publisher McClatchy, whose stock plummeted following a 2006 acquisition of San Jose-based Knight Ridder.
“It seems like the ones who orchestrated the whole mess should be losing their jobs or getting pushed into smaller quarters,” Richtmyer wrote on May 28. “But they aren’t.”
McClathy, like countless other newspaper publishers, happens to be a member of the AP’s newsgathering cooperative. Had the comment been uttered in real life, it likely would have dissipated into the rank air of a Philly journo bar. But Richtmyer had some 51 AP colleagues as Facebook friends, some of them higher up in the AP food chain. One turned out to be a “mole” — Richtmyer’s description — and the reporter was given a firm talking-to by AP management, who put a reprimand letter in his employment file.
Paul Colford, a spokesman for New York-based AP, declined in an e-mail to address Richtmyer’s case. But he said that “guidance offered to AP staff is that participation on Twitter and Facebook must conform with AP’s News Values and Principles.” That ethics policy says writers “must be mindful that opinions they express may damage the AP’s reputation as an unbiased source of news. They must refrain from declaring their views on contentious public issues in any public forum.”
The News Media Guild, which represents about 1,000 AP reporters around the U.S., is crying foul, suggesting that the AP’s ethics policy is a blunt instrument when it comes to semipublic internet spaces like Facebook, where default privacy settings make comments like Richtmyer’s available only to a small circle of friends. The union is asking the AP to fine-tune its policy, and to reverse Richtmyer’s reprimand.
The minidrama is an increasingly familiar one as companies and workers navigate the landscape defined by sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Firings and reprimands over postings to social networking sites have become commonplace over the last year.
A stadium employee with the Philadelphia Eagles was fired in March after a Facebook post calling the team “retarded” for trading a star player. A North Carolina teacher was suspended in November for posting on Facebook, “I hate my students.” Three Harrison, New York, police officers were suspended in February after making untoward Facebook comments about their mayor.
And two New Jersey restaurant workers are now suing their former boss after they were fired for their rumblings about the restaurant management on MySpace. The federal suit accuses the manager of logging onto the online discussion using another employee’s credentials.
One issue — at the AP, and probably everywhere else — stems from the touchy social and political etiquette of responding to friend requests from managers, who aren’t necessarily friends in real life. “We told the company months ago that we were concerned with managers asking to be invited onto Facebook pages of unit members,” Keane wrote in his memo. “It’s fine if the manager is your real friend. People may feel intimidated into saying yes to the invitation, and it’s like they are in your living room with friends making all sorts of small talk.”
In a brief telephone interview, Keane said Richtmyer’s reprimand is more than a empty gesture of disapproval. “Everything in your file can be used” toward terminating an employee, he said.
Private-sector workers have little, if any, protection from being fired or reprimanded for what they say online or off, said Wendy Seltzer, a First Amendment lawyer at American University. “If you put it onto a Twitter stream or a Facebook page, if they get word of that, they can fire you,” Seltzer said. “Electronic communications are more persistent, and more likely to find their way into the boss’ hands.”
Federal employees, she said, generally have a First Amendment protection against being fired for their speech, unless it “impedes the ability to do the job,” Seltzer said.
Richtmyer declined to be interviewed for this story.
Disclosure: David Kravets is a former AP reporter.
Copyright 2009 Condé Nast Digital