On Monday, The Register-Guard — my former employer — laid off seven-percent of its workforce. This, after negotiating with the Union earlier this year for employees to take week-long unpaid furloughs in order to prevent layoffs.
Looks like those furloughs didn’t work, and now people who had already sacrificed are being asked to pay for it with their livelihoods; while those left behind are demoralized and wondering what their unpaid time was for, if not to prevent layoffs.
There’s no question the newspaper industry is struggling. It’s hard to blame a paper, such as The Register Guard, a medium sized publication in a medium sized town from needing to make cuts in order to survive. It’s the fashion in which they did it that’s completely unacceptable.
Venting his frustration, a former colleague and a great friend of mine, posted rather nakedly, his thoughts on the events of the day on Twitter and Facebook.
One such comment:
If a sports team’s failing the coach/GM get fired first. 21 RG workers lost jobs today; no suits among them. Accountability?
While I completely agreed with his reaction, I was immediately worried of the repercussions.
Today, this:
Even twitter & FB can be censored. Big brother is watching. Don’t ask, cuz I will explain nothing.
Yesterday’s comments had been deleted.
All this calls into question, what exactly is okay to be said on a personal forum in the heat of the moment?
Should an individuals’ voice be allowed to be censored or silenced by their company when that individual uses their own forum to vent their frustration?
Many, myself included, subscribe to the believe that Facebook, Twitter and other social media services should be treated no differently than if my friend had made that comment to a group of his buddies, even co-workers, at the local sports bar. In that context, his accountability statement is justified.
My Register Guard friend is not alone however. Just today, I came across this article from Wired Magazine, in which an Associated Press reporter was reprimanded for making comments criticizing the management of his newspaper.
“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.
According to the Wired story, reprimands and firings over Facebook, Twitter and MySpace comments have become common place over the last year.
Publications dependent on the first amendment, stifled their own employees right to voice their opinion.
Now, I understand there is a difference between freedom of speech and freedom from repercussions of that speech. It’s a slippery slope if you allow unchecked speech in all venues on all topics. That said, the context of that speech should be taken into consideration, and what is said among friends, even via the internet, should remain among friends and not be censored or punishable in any way.
I know that any comment made on the internet should go through a personal sensor of “is this going to hurt me down the road,” but at what level must we sensor ourselves from our beliefs, opinions and the truth?
Nothing that my friend said was a lie. It was all verifiable fact. Why is that a crime? Especially in the context of the comment among friends.
While my friend didn’t lose his job over the situation, his situation, and that of Richard Richtmyer’s show that it’s time for clear guidelines or laws protecting speech in the digital age.