AP Reporter Earns Reprimand for Facebook Comments

Social networking sites are taking over our lives and becoming a nearly ubiquitous part of our everyday lives.  And while they offer great ways to keep up with friends and family or rally for our favorite genre shows, we do have to remember that things we post on-line can come back to haunt us minutes, hours, days or weeks later.

Philadelphia-based Associated Press reporter Richard Richtmyer learned that lesson the hard way this week when he was reprimanded and had a written-reprimand placed in his file for comments has made about his company on his Facebook page.

“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.”

McClatchy, like many papers across the United States and the world is  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.

The lesson here is two-fold.  One is to be careful what you say and the other is to be careful of who you add as a friend.

According to Wired, the News Media Guild, a union of reporters, is protesting the reprimand and asking for some clarification on the rules for using social networking sites by the AP.

“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.”

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.

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.”