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My latest article on CBS News broadcast legend Fred Friendly, was recently published by the RI Historical Society. You can read it here: https://issuu.com/rihs/docs/the_times_fall_winter_2020_final/10?ff&fbclid=IwAR0l1OiQ8O6JF7CjblwxrJv9G97VWxVvXMd9LAyYg4PVvSxwCDnbKlQx8xg

This is my most recent article, published by the RI Jewish Historical Association:

Silvia article (as spreads) (1)

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Memories Where You Can Find Them

The VHS box set of “Star Wars.” I bought that for her for Christmas.

The first video games he ever lobbied to get for Christmas. I bought those, too.

The Care Bears that I stood in line at frigid Christmas time, with tons of other parents, to “win” for her special gift.

Oh, and there were the “My Little Pony(s),” all the accessories, and how about those “Cabbage Patch Kids?”

Those CD’s by people with names like “Vanilla Ice.”

They’re all in my house now. Some of them are visible every day. Some are packed away in the attic. I either pass or come across them every day, in my travels here at the home where our “kids” were raised.

I called it a “home.” Actually, now it’s a house. That’s a downgrade.

When did that happen? I guess around the time our daughter and son “grew up.”

Sure, they still come to visit, sometimes for a weekend, sometimes longer, always for holidays, at least for now, with or without a spouse or “other.”

I wonder for how long.

The rest of the time I walk by this stuff they left behind and see how much more was left behind. So much more.

Some of it is just “stuff.”  Some of it is more, much, much more.

There are the baseball gloves, his and mine. They correspond to the patch of lawn where we played catch in a time that seems not so very long ago. But it was.

There are the photos of the pets, long gone, in each of their bedrooms. Why do they keep those?

And why am not able to avoid looking at them each time I walk in and out of their rooms to raise shades or lower windows?

Old technology abounds. There’s the boom box that once was state-of-the-art and its sibling, the Walkman.

I pledged I’d get rid of all this stuff last summer. Or, was it the summer before? Or is it every summer since they “grew up”?

When my mom died nearly eight years ago, my dad, now 94, told my sister and me that nothing was to be touched in his house. He wanted it exactly the way it was when my mother left us.

That seemed an old man’s clinging to something long gone, something that can’t be retrieved, a time that can’t be brought back.

A fool’s gold.

It seemed that way.

But then, I became that man.

What would seem to others like scrap is my gold.

It is a touchstone on a time and of a time.

It is a window to memories that shouldn’t depend upon an object, and yet they do.

These objects—all of them—are markers, reminders that this once was a home.

Now it’s a house.

The difference may not be measurable, but it is palpable.

And it brings me, as a father, closer to my own.

It’s one of those experiences that falls into the category of “firsts.” First love, first kiss, first job, first car, first concert.
It’s one of those indelible joys, proof that we are making progress toward growing up, getting closer to something for which we yearned: adulthood.
When I was growing up, and maybe when you were, I looked forward to the day when I could go to my first concert, an experience filled with anticipation of independence from my parents.
I had every expectation that it would be crowded, loud, characterized by blazing lights and thumping sound.
I expected all those things.
What I never had to think about was that I could be a soft target.
I remember my father, who had worked all day in the fields, dropped me off at the RI Auditorium, a cavernous barn of an arena, an hour’s from our home, so I could have the shared experience with friends and total strangers of watching the great James Brown, Sonny and Cher, the Young Rascals.
He probably had his own apprehensions about what was going on at the concert.
What he didn’t have to think about was that I might be a soft target.
With our own kids, I came closer to knowing what fear was when letting go of them for what was an early marker of adolescent independence.
I never had to think of them, not even once, as soft targets.
As various media outlets repeat that term nearly every 5 minutes, in the shadow of the bombings outside an Ariana Grande concert in the UK, I’m struck by the irony of the term itself.
While I know the term “soft target” has specific meaning when devising strategies to fight terrorism, it hardly seems appropriate when describing the hard reality of what we as a culture are now facing.
For the nearly 22 young people who lost their lives, there was nothing “soft” about the brutal action that robbed them of their youth and their future.
For the parents of those young people, there will be no “soft” days ahead.
I’m aware that “soft target” refers to distinguishing between high risk and lower risk targets, but I also wonder if using the term actually desensitizes us to the reality of terror.
There’s more at stake here than semantics.
As soon as we delineate and separate some places as soft targets for terrorists, don’t we shield ourselves from the realization that we live in a world where nowhere is safe?
The loss of these young people’s lives is the most tragic part of this or any act of terrorism.
But the collateral damage is the destruction of the joy, the memories of childhood, preadolescence, and adolescence that the young people of this and future generations may never have.
As another musician, Don Henley, once wrote, it’s the end of the innocence.
And there’s nothing soft about it.

I’m always tempted to write about serious issues involving journalistic practices, often those that result in an ethical lapse. Sometimes, though, it’s just good to take a break from all that “seriousness” and focus on some of journalism’s simpler lapses. Watching local TV news provides a lot upon which to focus. Here are the top 5 most annoying habits common to many television reporters.

5. Nodding continuously while being tossed (TV lingo for being introduced) to by the studio anchor during a live shot. The best I can deduce, it’s to reassure the show’s producer that the reporter knows she/he is on camera and is ready to go. Unfortunately, it often doesn’t so much  project preparation as it does an unfortunate nervous “tick” or spasm.

4. Walking and talking on camera even when standing still makes more sense and motion is not only gratuitous, but distracting. A variation on this is random hand movement, meant to punctuate and emphasize a story’s major points. Instead,  an excess of both result in making the reporter appear to have some variation of ADD or ADHD.

3. Failing to check pronunciation before reading a story off the teleprompter. This really becomes obvious when the word is part of a familiar phrase like “bats in the belfry.”  Most viewers know the last word in that phrase is pronounced “bel-free.”  I heard an experienced news anchor recently pronounce it “bel-fry.”  That really burned her credibility with me.

2.  Laughing exhaustively at a colleague’s comment. Yes, those who work in TV news are supposed to appear to be “friends” on and off the set. That’s why reporters will often joke back and forth. Let’s face it. Most aren’t Jimmy Fallon or Jon Stewart. Let’s invoke the 5 second rule. If you feel you must establish “rapport” with your anchor or reporter, limit the hilarity to no more than five seconds and move on. Audiences can take this stuff to a limited degree, usually around the weather segment, which most of the time isn’t serious anyway.

1. Looking serious no matter what. Just as everything isn’t hilarious, every story isn’t related to a life or death issue. Staring at the camera with a mournful “the world as we know it is ending” look while delivering a sad or tragic story suggests not only over-hype of the story, but a lack of perspective on what’s really important in our world. Looking appropriately serious is good. Looking like you, personally, are in pain, as opposed to the real pain of  those directly impacted by your story, is not.

An addendum to the number one annoyance: The story, any story, is not yours. It belongs to those living it, those whose lives are impacted by it. As visual storytellers, TV news reporters can be especially vulnerable to annoying habits. The antidote is vigilance: be sure that what you think you are conveying is actually what the audience is receiving.

(This column was originally posted by floridapolitics.com on July 15, 2016.)

For those of you who are elderly or disabled and travel north for the summer, let this be a cautionary tale. Recently, I experienced a new awareness of the continuing disconnect that exists the between the “able” world, in which the majority of the population live, and the “disabled” community.

There are a billion — that’s right, one billion with a “b” — fellow travelers on this planet Earth who have some form of disability.

Great advances in accommodations and accessibility have arisen from the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. However, since my wife recently experienced a temporary disability this summer, as her caregiver, I now know firsthand that much more must be done.

In July, we visited a theater in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, called Barrington Stage. We’ve been there in the past, but failed to notice the theater has no elevator.

On previous visits, we were “able” to climb the multiple staircases to the mezzanine, so it was not an issue.

Now, given my wife’s changed circumstances, I recall past visits, seeing many elderly, if not disabled, audience members having severe trouble navigating the stairs to the mezzanine.

Given that the majority of their audience falls into the elderly demographic, this would seem to be especially inappropriate. Floridians finding themselves in a similar age group can certainly relate.

It’s hard for me to fathom that my wife and I were the only ones (think theater management) who noticed those out of breath and unsteady theatergoers finally reaching their seats on high.

Obviously, the solution is to sit downstairs in the orchestra WHEN or IF tickets are available there. What happens, however, when they are not? That was my experience recently when trying to purchase tickets for an especially in-demand production.

The orchestra seats were sold out, but available that morning were half-price, day-of-sale tickets.

Good, right? Wrong.

All those seats were in the mezzanine. I anticipated a problem, but honestly expected to broker a sensible solution.

First, I spoke to a manager, by phone, at the site of purchase, to make what I considered to be a reasonable request. Couldn’t she simply put a chair of any kind downstairs at the rear of the orchestra (or anywhere) so my wife did not have to (which she wasn’t able to) traverse the long staircase upstairs?

I was told no, “sorry, but no.”

I tried again by phone, through a very courteous ticket agent, to reiterate the request to someone who I was told was a different manager.

The answer, again, was no.

This is disturbing on a number of levels: (1) Barrington Stage prides itself (or so they say) on making theater available to everyone; (2) I’m assuming that, like most arts groups, Barrington Stage receives some level of federal or state funding, which means that they should fall under ADA rules. Even IF they don’t, there is an ethical, if not legal, responsibility to address the above issue.

Their failure to do so is especially disappointing, in light of the fact that THREE other cultural groups in the area all assisted my wife with seating, without even being asked.

Ironically, in a different theater, only 20 miles further in Williamstown, the play being performed, “Cost of Living,” centers on how the larger culture interacts with the disabled community. Those who run Barrington Stage should see it; the experience could help make them aware of what I saw: the consequences of what happens when those who are “able” are intransigent toward those who are not.

My wife’s disability is, as I said, temporary. I can only imagine how those whose disabilities are permanent navigate similar scenarios each and every day of their lives.

Since initially writing this as a “Letter to the Editor” to the local newspaper — “The Berkshire Eagle” — I received a response that they wouldn’t print it.

Why? Because it wouldn’t be “fair” to the theater.

The paper apparently reached out to the theater’s management, who responded they couldn’t put in one extra chair because it would violate a fire law, and they could be fined.

My response: That’s a specious argument. I disagree. ONE chair makes a fire violation? Come on. What they did was an ethical violation, if not a legal one.

In addition, I also believe that, from a journalistic perspective, you have not done due diligence. Why don’t they have an elevator? Do they accept federal funds? (They do.)

As noted in a 2014 news release: “Barrington Stage Company receives $10,000 Art Works Grant from National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in support of Dancing Lessons, a world premiere by Mark St. Germain.”

With that said, do they fall under ADA regulations/laws? Good question. Why not ask it?

There’s a story here, Berkshire Eagle. You missed it. You especially missed the larger issue contained within my attempt to broker a broader conversation. Why can other arts groups do the right thing without even being asked? Aren’t they subject to the same “fire laws?”

They’re not off the hook and neither are you, regarding your responsibility to broker that conversation. If the discussion (that’s what journalism is about, correct?) led to the conclusion you’ve reached OR your own research did so, then that’s fair.

Taking their word for it is not.

I appreciate, as I hope Berkshire Eagle readers do, that there are avenues other than mainstream media through which to broker discussion.

One of the most important issues to discuss is how we treat — or, in some cases, mistreat — those who do not enjoy all the privileges of good health so many of us take for granted.

Perhaps inspired by historic acts of civil disobedience in American.society, Doug Hughes, a U.S. postal service employee and resident of Ruskin, Florida, thought it was a good idea to make his point to Congress by delivering the message personally—by landing on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol in what’s called a gyro-copter, a vehicle small enough to fly “below the radar.” That delivery wasn’t “first-class”, but it was a criminal act (violating a federal no-fly zone) which could land Hughes in prison for up to four years. There’s no argument over the positive impact of civil disobedience in our society, but there is certainly reason to question his judgement or, at the very least, the timing of that judgement.

What’s worrisome is that no one, apparently, questioned that judgement. Not his friends or family. Not his co-workers. Oh sure, some of them now say they were worried about his safety. Not local journalists, who knew of his plans as early as last summer, but didn’t question his judgement. Among their arguments: it wasn’t their job to alert officials that someone planned to violate the no-fly zone of the nation’s capital, which is, to be clear, a crime. Actually, they now say they did alert officials—once Hughes was airborne and heading to the capitol and only to get a comment for the story they were about to cover on the ground.

In their defense, the Tampa Bay Times reporter and managing editor never made a secret of what was transpiring. They were very transparent in posting elements of the story—including Hughes’ intentions—on-line and through social media as it progressed. They even say they contacted the Secret Service and one of its ranks interviewed Hughes. They maintain they didn’t believe his intent was to harm the public (he told them so) and that he had no terrorist agenda.

The Times sent reporter Ben Montgomery and a photographer to Washington to cover the story, with the expectation there would be a story. Their explanation would seem to revolve around the idea that if they reported the flight to authorities earlier it would impact the outcome of said story. The counterargument could be that by not contacting the authorities earlier they ensured there would be a story.

Full disclosure: Jennifer Orsi, the Times executive editor, is someone I know. She’s spoken in my journalism classes (my Media Ethics course, in fact) and, more recently, gave me a wonderful introduction at a lecture I gave on my latest book at the Times’ parent organization, the Poynter Institute. She is, as I far as I know, a fine, responsible and thoughtful journalist. But thoughtful journalists can respectfully disagree. It is part of our ethical code, set forth by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), to point out mistakes in ourselves and others when they occur. It’s called “accountability,” not just for our own stories, but for the institution we call journalism.

Doing ethics, a term one of my colleagues coined years ago, doesn’t involve assigning blame. It does involve asking the right questions, even when the “right” answers are elusive (or there are none). This is one of those times. If I worked this scenario through with my students (which I plan to do), we would base our decision on the four pillars of the SPJ Code: Seeking Truth, Minimizing Harm, Exercising Independence, and Being Accountable.

Certainly, the Times’ decision was based on truth, or what they considered to be the truth at the time: that the individual in question—Mr. Hughes—had no ill intent, that he wouldn’t harm anyone and that he wasn’t mentally unstable. But what qualifies journalists to make that decision? I might ask, peripherally, how many journalists (or anyone else for that matter) could have predicted the mental stability of Timothy McVeigh, a decorated U.S. serviceman who seemed anything but a domestic terrorist? Specialists in forensic psychology have tried and failed in this and other instances, so what makes journalists so sure they can competently judge the state of mind of an individual who says he has nothing but civil disobedience on his mind?

I ask my students in every case study we consider to identify the “stakeholders”—those with the most to win or lose by our decisions. Mr. Hughes himself was a primary stakeholder in this scenario. He may have wanted the Tampa Bay Timesto be aware of and document his story as a way of protecting his personal safety, but I’m not aware of any journalistic shield that prevents authorities from shooting a flying object out of the sky when it approaches a national landmark, let alone the seat of our government. To put it bluntly, Mr. Hughes could have been killed; that’s not minimizing harm.

In the video that accompanies stories about Hughes’ flight, a tourist (one of hundreds on the Congressional lawn that day as there are every day) is heard saying “This isn’t good.” It’s an interpretation, but what if those in close proximity perceived this to be a terrorist act? Would hundreds of people be trampled, some injured, others killed? I don’t know, but neither does the newspaper. Did they consider that possibility? It, too, is harm.

Harm is something journalists are always asked to consider. It’s something that we can’t always predict or eliminate. That’s because, as in this case, we can’t always choose what is harm and to whom. That’s also why the SPJ Code reads minimize harm. We may not be in a position to arbiters of harm, but we, hopefully, have the professional “tools” to assess the possibilities.

Independence is a concept that suggests we make our own decisions, apart from what authorities, sources, or interested parties want us to do. Here, the Times would seem a bit afield. On the one hand, the reporter and editor did act independently in their decisions, unpressured by others in government—and that’s an important principle. On the other, they did follow a source who may or may not have been misguided or made myopic by his own zeal for a cause.
Finally, the newspaper was accountable by being very transparent in outlining the process that led up to its decision to pursue the story. They explained why they did what they did, so the public could assess their actions; reporters and editors seem to have been proactive, not reactive, in terms of their decision-making.

One of the most important aspects of the decision, however: the afore-mentioned timing. When Martin Luther King led citizens in the March on Washington, terrorism of the type we know today did not exist. There had been no 9/11. There had been no Oklahoma City bombing. There was no ISIS. Civil disobedience upset many in America in the 1960’s, surely, but the citizenry, let alone the government, had not internalized the possibility that real harm could be the intent. What happened at the U.S. Capitol this past Wednesday may have been the idealistic vision of someone who wants to improve, not destroy, America. But we don’t know that. And neither did the journalists involved.
Here are links to some stories that discuss the issue:

• http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/336017/tampa-bay-times-knew-about-gyrocopter-stunt-months-in-advance/
• http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/15/media/gyrocopter-capitol-tampa-bay-times/
• http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/elections/ruskin-mailman-tries-flying-to-capitol-in-gyrocopter-to-deliver-campaign/2225584

As someone who teaches and lectures on media ethics, this week has created a fertile ground—maybe better described as a battlefield—for ethical discussion and deliberation. Why a battlefield? Perhaps it’s because that’s the turf on which Williams’ detractors (and there are many) and supporters (who seem invisible if there are any) are warring over the NBC anchorman’s integrity. It began with disclosures that Williams may have fabricated details of the extent to which he was directly involved in a firefight while reporting from Iraq in 2003. It has grown to a scrutiny of other stories Williams has reported in his ten years as the network’s primary news presence, including accusations that details of his reporting during Hurricane Katrina also contained inaccuracies, if not outright fabrications. Most recently, questions have been raised surrounding a story he told during a media interview stating that, as a youth in New Jersey, he stared down danger in the form of a revolver pointed at him during a robbery. Among his chief competitors, CNN compiled Williams’ alleged lapses in truth telling, seen here:

http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2015/02/10/ac-pkg-kaye-brian-williams-fact-check.cnn

Meantime, NBC executives have been “mum” except to (1) state that there is an ongoing “internal” investigation, headed by one of its investigative producers; (2) ostensibly approve Williams’ “own” decision to remove himself from the Nightly News anchor chair because he stated that he was concerned that instead of reporting the news, he was becoming the news, a phrase worth remembering in the larger context of the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” of this expanding storyline.

The timing of Williams fall from grace is interesting, if not ironic. In celebrating his tenth anniversary as their news standard bearer, late last year and into this, NBC had launched a major promotional campaign touting the “trust” Brian Williams had earned over his time reporting the “big” stories of our time, Iraq and Afghanistan among them. Oddly, they’re still available on-line, suggesting that, if his bosses at NBC had doubts about Williams’ truth-telling, they either sublimated those or believed that, on balance, they didn’t negate his body of work:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2015/02/05/10th-anniversary-promos-celebrated-brian-williamss-integriy-humility-and

Of course, there’s another possible explanation. As the Baltimore Sun’s media critic, David Zurawik has suggested, maybe the standards for truth in journalism have changed so drastically that the kinds of “errors” (if that’s what they were) made by Williams really don’t resonate with the public any longer—and so maybe they didn’t exactly reverberate with his bosses. I would argue that whether they do, they should. So should the way we refer to what’s really at stake here.

Journalists, I’ve been teaching students and professionals for over a quarter century, use words precisely. Public relations people are in the business of using words selectively. Since this story broke, I’ve heard Williams’ offenses referred to as “conflations,” “memory lapses,” even “embellishments.” How about “untruths” or, to use, the word’s less euphemistic equivalent, “lies?”

Frankly, I don’t know the truth. As with so many stories that intrigue us, only those who were there do. I do know, however, that we can’t get at the truth and report it if we only act like a news organization when we’re reporting on others besides ourselves. That’s exactly what NBC is doing. Internal investigation? By whom? An NBC producer whose livelihood essentially depends upon the favor of the very person he’s “investigating?” My son, a Boston attorney, would say, “come on, now,” or, as a Time magazine editorialist rightfully observes, a news organization would never accept this from any other corporation on which it was reporting.

I do know this. As my colleague at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, Al Tompkins, has pointed out, the president of NBC News hasn’t come out supporting Brian Williams. Why is that? I suggest that maybe NBC is using its business sense more than its journalistic sensibility. Consider: the latest rating period shows Brian Williams’ real faltering may be more ratings centered than ethically driven.

Williams’ most recent ratings, seen here, http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2015/02/10/world-news-tonight-is-delivering-its-largest-overall-season-audience-in-7-years/361708/, are on the decline. Television news is a business. When you become a liability to the business because you lose trust, maybe you lose your job. After all, that’s what your bosses promised in all those promos they ran and now they look bad. That’s part of it, but not, as they say, the whole story.

Brian Williams is a very rich man, on the order of a major music or movie star. And his behavior has indicated that stature. He’s done the rounds: Letterman, Fallon, Stewart. He has even gotten in on his daughter, Allison’s, celebrity status. As Dan Abrams, a former NBC colleague put it: “Williams’ comedic appearances on the likes of “SNL” and the “Daily Show” have boosted his popularity but made him more vulnerable.”

The cult of celebrity is a curious, yet pervasive, influence in our society. It can make you and it can break you. Brian Williams crossed that line from journalist to celebrity. With it came recognition, fame, and the lifestyle bought by both. What didn’t transfer was the awareness that some lines can’t be crossed. As one of my current students recognized, there’s a tendency for old journalists, like old warriors, to tweak their memories just enough to make a story they’ve told before just that much better on retelling.

When you come to believe you are the story, creating a better story may seem only natural. In 1987 a seminal movie titled Broadcast News captured the nation’s attention, if only because it offered a rare glimpse inside the process by which news is “made.” The main character, when questioned about an ethical lapse that led him to fabricate details of a story, acknowledged there was a line he had crossed, but also argued that “they just keep moving the little bugger.” That line may have, indeed, shifted, and for a whole variety of reasons. But I would argue there still is a line.

I once had on my office wall a quote from J.R. Ewing, the opportunist main character of the television series Dallas. It read, “Once you give up integrity, the rest is a piece of cake.” That’s fine for a fictional character, but not when applied to someone in a field where integrity is a central, core value. They’re two different story lines and we expect, and have a right to expect, that one of them is true.

I’ve been hearing a lot of major news organizations lately using video that they “can’t independently verify,” as in the following: “NBC News has not been able to independently verify the video we’re about to show you.” What? So, let me get this straight. You’re going to show me something that you’re not sure is true?

From the Donald Sterling tape to the recent surveillance video which appears to show Beyonce’s younger sister attacking her husband Jay Z, if it “looks real,” that seems to be good enough for news managers. Maybe it’s a function of so-called “reality” (which is anything but) TV. Maybe it’s the rush to “out TMZ” TMZ.

Maybe it’s just laziness or an abdication of one of the major principles upon which credible journalism is based: independence—a central tenet of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.

I didn’t know this until recently, but apparently TMZ is an acronym for “ten mile zone,” as in anything outside a ten mile radius of Hollywood isn’t “news.” That’s fine for TMZ. But, if you’re a major news organization, shouldn’t you employ a slightly wider lens and, by the way, shouldn’t you turn that lens inward when it comes to your own reporting?

How about beginning with verifying the source of the video before you run it? After all, whether it’s for monetary gain or public relations advantage, most moving images that aren’t the result of your own independent reporting most often come with an agenda.

You don’t get a pass by saying “we haven’t been able to independently verify it.” That doesn’t sound like due diligence to me. I don’t think it does to your audience, either.

The Sterling story is an important one, the Beyonce story not so much. Creating equivalency between the two, based solely upon the existence of salacious “tape,” diminishes the significance of either. Even worse, running that video, without verification of the circumstances under which it was recorded—reduces your own credibility as a news source.

Look, Sterling is not a poster child for tolerance. But how do we, as legitimate news organizations, report his story accurately if we’re not even sure of our source’s authenticity? Hearing people in their own words—especially when their words are outrageous–is compelling television. But it’s worth stopping to remember that compelling television isn’t always great journalism.

Increasingly, reporters are told to increase their social media profile. Some news managers even measure “value” to the newsroom by the number of twitter followers a reporter has or the number of “likes” on her/his Facebook page. It all adds up to that reporter’s “IQ.”  No, it’s not what you think. It has nothing to do with intelligence. The “I” in this “IQ” stands for influence. The more widespread that reporter’s presence on the web, the more it is assumed to be an indication of the writer’s worth to the audience. It certainly helps spread the news organization’s brand and enhances its prestige by being shared and re-tweeted, maybe even reposted on other news sites.  It’s a win for the individual journalist and for the newsroom–except when the reporter writes something her bosses wish wouldn’t proliferate across social media.

That’s what happened this week when Shea Allen, a reporter at WAAY-TV in Huntsville, Alabama was fired for statements made, she says in jest, on her personal blog site, titled “Confessions of a Red Headed Reporter.”  They included a revelation that she had “gone bra-less” for live shots without anyone being the wiser and that her “best sources are ones that are secretly attracted to me.”  Those two revelations present the best of her judgment. It gets worse, with a “humorous” slight to “old people,” about whom she says she refuses to do stories  because they “frighten” her.  Oh, and there’s this: “I’m better live when I have no script and no idea what I’m talking about.”   You can read the full list here:

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2013/07/huntsville_reporter_shea_allen.html

 Allen, whose new-found notoriety landed her on the “Today Show” this morning, contends that her bosses are being hypocritical:  “On the one hand, management wants you to exploit every social media site you possibly can, put as much content out there, drive to the web, drive to the web. And then on the other hand, I’ve done something in my personal time on the web, a personally designated space and I’ve been terminated for it.”

It’s worth noting, if you haven’t already guessed, that this was her first on-air television job. That’s not an excuse, but it is worth noting.  As Lindsey Pollak, a career and workplace expert said on “Today,” that younger professionals “don’t have the same filter” about posting personal opinions and information on social media that people who started their careers before the advent of social media have.”  That’s certainly a part of the discussion, but isn’t judgment (or the lack thereof) also an issue here?  Professionals should have some inkling of appropriate behavior, both on and off the job, no matter what the job is.  In a position that’s so public, it’s perhaps not unfair to expect an even higher degree of judgment. 

But Shea Allen’s bosses don’t get a pass either. IF the generational argument has merit, does the station have a clearly defined social media policy that new employees are given (along with all other workplace policies) when they’re hired?  

While some of what she wrote may have been ill-advised, context is important. It was on her personal, not station, blog.  The point Ms. Allen makes regarding news outlets pushing their reporters to increase their social media profiles is another factor to be considered. So, too, is the question of freedom of speech–do reporters surrender it off the job because they are in the news business? 

Finally, what about privacy issues?  Though you are a “public” figure in your job, does management’s censure of you extend to activities you undertake on your own time in your “private” life?  Some of these, of course, are legal questions; others, though, are ethical ones. Instead of being the subject of a one day, finger-pointing story, Shea Allen’s loss can be the starting point for a discussion–one from which other journalists can gain.