This month's Social Media Club of Richmond VA meeting on "The Legal of Social" was the most informative one of the series, and yet I have few notes.
Maybe it's because the presenter, fast-talking lawyer Chris Gates, opened with the closer: there is no social media law.
Okay then! Back to the cash bar!
If you paid attention in your libel law class in j-school, you know the basics already. Libel is hard to prove and a hard case to win, and if you are in any way a public figure, even within your own community, too bad. People can say whatever they want about you. On the other hand, try not to be the type of person who says whatever they want about other people. It's just not nice.
Blog and website hosters with open comments sections should post a policy in advance about what kind of posts will be taken down. You can have standards, as long as everyone knows them going in. What's said in the comments section is not your problem. Comment liability belongs to the commenter.
What kinds of things shouldn't you tweet or post? Well, how dangerously do you want to live? You probably shouldn't tweet trade secrets, or insider trading info that could impact stock prices of your company. You definitely shouldn't tweet nasty things about your boss or co-workers, that you're cheating on your spouse, or you buried the mailman under the house.
If you like to tweet or post ideas for movies or inventions, and then someone else makes that movie or invention, you may have a hard time proving you hold the rights to it on a tweet alone. And if you are the first to hashtag the rallying cry that wins the war and rights the economy, don't expect to get any credit for it. Settle for being a legend in your own mind. Who invented #SNOMG anyway?
If you're an adult outside the privacy of your home and you are photographed doing something stupid, illegal or naked, and that photograph appears on the Internet, kind of too bad for you. I imagine if you invite all your friends over to your private house and they all have camera phones, and you do something stupid, you may be equally screwed. Moral: don't be stupid. Or naked.
And avoid misunderstandings by giving your tweets and posts those stupid emoticons because the Internet doesn't have a tone of voice or facial expression to clue people into the context. ;P
There were several questions about the sticky area of adults and children interacting on the Internet. Photo releases at registration for events are recommended. Teachers letting their students be their Facebook friends? Hmmm, no. That's just asking for trouble. (Why not set up a classroom fan page, but keep your personal profile private?) Chatting with underaged kids online even if you work with them during the day? Not good.
Rhythm Hall at the Carpenter Center was standing room only at this event.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
What Probably Went Down at the Beheading
It's a PR flak's job not to stop trying, so you can't fault that person for persistently bugging a reporter to the brink of insanity. As a result, one previously unknown motivational speaker who would have had a limited turn-out for his speech just scored a bonanza of free publicity and cast a massive PC guilt trip over all the liberals in town. If you don't come to his speech now, the verbal terrorists have won. From a PR point of view, that flak is a genius.
But who are we kidding? People say disparaging things about others in the privacy of their work groups, especially under stress, extreme aggravation, or just to be funny. Who gets more publicly insulted than overweight people? What comedian hasn't let slip a joke about the governor of New York's visual disability? Who hasn't "The Family Guy" insulted? Yes, it's part of the culture. Tasteful and polite we're not. So why did a local reporter get axed today?
On the local level, when you're in a sensitive official position, you have to know better than to put an unPC insult in writing. Then there's the nightmare of hitting the REPLY button on the email instead of FORWARD. This isn't the first time email technology has resulted in dire consequences. What happened was, the reporter thought he was forwarding an email from the flak to his editor, adding a note that the flak was a super annoying person in unflattering language. The flak, a minority, promptly went to the publisher and expressed outrage, and the firing was instant.
A decade ago, I professionally competed against the reporter in question. This behavior wasn't out of character. He's had similar dust-ups at other jobs. Those of us who travel in the same circles have heard about them. It is part of what makes him good at what he does, actually. He's an aggressive reporter. But journalism in Richmond has historically been a bow tie profession for gentlemen. There's no other explanation for why the premiere investigative reporter in the area was allowed to leave the city's only daily newspaper, and no one with the same skill set has ever taken his place there.
I have no doubt his paper flogged him for brash behavior, loose talk, chronically missing deadlines, or being less than tactful with sources in order to squeeze info out of them. Still, he advanced to the next level, the daily Times-Dispatch with its grim, humorless copy desk, I knew there was no way his rambunctious style would survive intact. Predictably, his bylined stories there were indistinguishable from any other reporter's. The copy desk was earning its salary distilling him.
From there he went to a county public information office -- obviously not a good fit. It wasn't long before he turned up at an arts and culture weekly as an investigative journalist. I suspect they were hoping someone else would show up to fill the position, but it's not easy finding a writer who can produce hard-hitting investigative journalism and still be a nonabrasive person who never causes the publisher one moment of embarrassment. Plus, if your rough copy needs editing for style and structure, turning it in late all the time makes your immediate editor hate the day you were born on a regular basis.
So, when a good excuse to part company appears out of the blue, the employer grabs it, even though with such a small writing staff, it's going to hurt. A lot. Management could have offered a rote apology to the offended party and then circled the wagons around their star employee. When the wagons don't circle, you know there's more to it. It never makes sense to outsiders. You have to know all the unrelated deep background. Sometimes a boss throws a protective shield over you, and sometimes they let you twist in the wind, regardless of the transgression. This was just the final straw on a totally different haystack.
There will be a lot of public dialogue in the coming days about whether the punishment fit the crime, our culture and our social boundaries -- and that's what the PR flack wants you to think this was about, as well as buy a ticket to hear his client -- but the fact is, that's not even what this was about.
But who are we kidding? People say disparaging things about others in the privacy of their work groups, especially under stress, extreme aggravation, or just to be funny. Who gets more publicly insulted than overweight people? What comedian hasn't let slip a joke about the governor of New York's visual disability? Who hasn't "The Family Guy" insulted? Yes, it's part of the culture. Tasteful and polite we're not. So why did a local reporter get axed today?
On the local level, when you're in a sensitive official position, you have to know better than to put an unPC insult in writing. Then there's the nightmare of hitting the REPLY button on the email instead of FORWARD. This isn't the first time email technology has resulted in dire consequences. What happened was, the reporter thought he was forwarding an email from the flak to his editor, adding a note that the flak was a super annoying person in unflattering language. The flak, a minority, promptly went to the publisher and expressed outrage, and the firing was instant.
A decade ago, I professionally competed against the reporter in question. This behavior wasn't out of character. He's had similar dust-ups at other jobs. Those of us who travel in the same circles have heard about them. It is part of what makes him good at what he does, actually. He's an aggressive reporter. But journalism in Richmond has historically been a bow tie profession for gentlemen. There's no other explanation for why the premiere investigative reporter in the area was allowed to leave the city's only daily newspaper, and no one with the same skill set has ever taken his place there.
I have no doubt his paper flogged him for brash behavior, loose talk, chronically missing deadlines, or being less than tactful with sources in order to squeeze info out of them. Still, he advanced to the next level, the daily Times-Dispatch with its grim, humorless copy desk, I knew there was no way his rambunctious style would survive intact. Predictably, his bylined stories there were indistinguishable from any other reporter's. The copy desk was earning its salary distilling him.
From there he went to a county public information office -- obviously not a good fit. It wasn't long before he turned up at an arts and culture weekly as an investigative journalist. I suspect they were hoping someone else would show up to fill the position, but it's not easy finding a writer who can produce hard-hitting investigative journalism and still be a nonabrasive person who never causes the publisher one moment of embarrassment. Plus, if your rough copy needs editing for style and structure, turning it in late all the time makes your immediate editor hate the day you were born on a regular basis.
So, when a good excuse to part company appears out of the blue, the employer grabs it, even though with such a small writing staff, it's going to hurt. A lot. Management could have offered a rote apology to the offended party and then circled the wagons around their star employee. When the wagons don't circle, you know there's more to it. It never makes sense to outsiders. You have to know all the unrelated deep background. Sometimes a boss throws a protective shield over you, and sometimes they let you twist in the wind, regardless of the transgression. This was just the final straw on a totally different haystack.
There will be a lot of public dialogue in the coming days about whether the punishment fit the crime, our culture and our social boundaries -- and that's what the PR flack wants you to think this was about, as well as buy a ticket to hear his client -- but the fact is, that's not even what this was about.
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