Meyer: Employers have right to ban blogging
In the following essay for CyberJournalist.net, University of Illinois journalism professor Eric Meyer defends the Hartford Courant's decision to order a staff member to stop publishing a Weblog, arguing the Weblog has "the potential to damage his employer's reputation."
In a companion counterpoint essay, blogger and online columnist J.D. Lasica argues against the decision, saying it will send "a chilling effect through the journalistic blogging community."
By Eric Meyer
My friend J.D. Lasica thinks the Hartford Courant's order for a staff member to cease posting a Weblog will send "a chilling effect through the journalistic blogging community."
Good idea, J.D. It's about time for all those Webloggers out there -- you included -- to start chilling out. Even the former Iraqi information minister would have to bow in admiration to the amount of hyperbole being slung around in the Hartford case.
Webloggers cry about Big Business usurping the First Amendment and stifling what they regard as the only voices of truth in the wilderness. Maybe that's true some of the time. I would worry very much about it if it were true now. But this time around, the dispute isn't about using an atomic flyswatter to squash a tiny buzzing of opinion. It's about making sure an employee is doing the job he was hired to do, not getting caught up in some overgrown, overly opinionated diary/hobby that unfairly treads on his association with his employer and has the potential to damage his employer's reputation.
Major news organizations have long had codes of conduct to which staffers must agree as a condition of employment. Among other things, these codes typically forbid employees to accept unauthorized freelance assignments, to inject themselves into public debate or to leverage their status as employees into some outside venture. Any of these would doubtlessly block an employee from creating a Weblog without authorization.
The fact that Weblogging is a relatively new technology does not make it immune from long-established policies. Read my lips, J.D.: A blog is a publication -- legally, morally, ethically. Whether the author contributes his content without pay and publishes it without competing for ad revenue does not diminish this. Contrary to the opinions of those who seem to view the world through anti-corporate glasses, everything does not always come down to money.
What it does come down to, in this case, is to demanding "personal time" inside a spotlight that an employer has shined on an employee. It's the employer's spotlight, not the employee's. Like it or not, the employer has the right to determine where and when it will be shined.
If Attila the Hun were running for alderman and Dan Rather did the voiceovers for his radio ads for free, Dan still would be committing an ethics violation even though he didn't get paid and wasn't starting to read the news for ABC and NBC instead of just CBS. What he he would be doing was using his celebrity, which CBS helped create, to express views CBS might not agree with -- and that others might use as evidence of CBS being biased.
But we're not talking primarily about a conflict of interest here. We're talking about a conflict of commitment. Whenever you hire a professional journalist, you hire, among other things, his or her creativity. If the creativity you thought you were hiring is being siphoned off by some outside activity, you have every right to ask that such activity cease. It's not a stifling of opinion. It just forces those with unrequited opinions to make a choice: Be a writer for my paper on my terms, or be a writer for your Weblog on your own terms. I don't want you splitting your creativity between them.
J.D. likes to talk about one important specific of this particular case -- a Connecticut law unlike the laws in most states. But he misses a far more important specific:
What we have in Hartford is a writer who used to have an opinion column in the paper. For one reason or another, he no longer has that column. Suddenly, an opinion column written by the same guy begins appearing on the Internet as his "personal Website."
Forget making a cause celebre out of this because it involves a Weblog. It seems obvious that what we have here is someone who was trying to play hardball with his employer -- and learned the hard way that there is such a thing as a brush-back pitch. The people to pity are the poor readers, who seem to have become pawns in some intraoffice squabble over whether a particular reporter should be a opinion columnist or a travel writer.
Alas, I fear that many people -- J.D. included -- are defending the reporter merely because he's using a blog. If he were printing a newsletter or appearing on a radio talk show, we never would have heard about this.. As is, all we hear is that whatever an employee does on his or her own time is none of his or her employer's business.
That's simply ludicrous. If the employee-employer relationship existed only during working hours, shouldn't employer-paid insurance cover you only if you become sick or die on the job? If I got sick while on vacation, I wouldn't cancel my vacation and take sick leave instead. Then again, I'm not a member in good standing of the Age of Entitlement and Lack of Personal Responsibility club.
The only argument J.D. has going for him is that readers need to know the political opinions of reporters to properly judge their work. Although it's mainly View from the WELL claptrap to assume that readers are clamoring to discover every writer's personal feelings, there is some truth to it.
Yet making that pitch reveals a fundamental flaw in J.D.'s logic. If it's so important for society to be able to understand individual reporters' biases, how can it be that Big Evil Corporations are controlling and slanting all the news to the extent that reporters can tell the truth only in their blogs? It's circular logic worthy of a Spirograph.
No, this isn't an issue of monopoly power or an assault on it. Trust me, J.D.; the Courant fears a Weblog not nearly as much as the Third Infantry feared regular units of the Iraqi army -- the ones who surrendered before fighting. This is an employment issue. The columnist represented himself (though you say "disclosed" himself) as a Courant staffer and engaged in journalism absent Courant editing. Even in the Age of Entitlement, he can't have it both ways. If he wants to bask in the Courant's spotlight, he has to stand where the Courant wants to shine it.
If that kills blogging, may it quietly rest in peace. Not every journalist believes that the only way he or she can contribute to the world is by musing upon it. Some of us concentrate on creating things of value, not opinion, for posting online. My own NewsLink.org and the student site DeepThroatUncovered.com that I just helped my students put together are, I hope, examples. As a professional in journalist, not a professional in self-expression, I would much rather spend my scarce free time creating content than I would telling you how I feel about content already created. This would be post-Modernism in the absurd.
This is hardly a threat to democracy, J.D. In fact, what you describe isn't democracy at all. It's socialism. True, a few newsroom interns might indeed be brighter than some top newsroom managers are, but I don't think the answer is to give every intern his or her own Marxist-inspired column with the newspaper's stamp of credibility on it. And believe it or not, J.D., most senior managers actually are more talented than most of their interns.
Stopping blogging won't lead, as you opine, to "more and more talented journalists . . . leaving the profession." Frankly, I don't see that many talented journalists leaving with or without blogs. What I see, as a journalism professor, is that the best and the brightest still tend to go into journalism.
To them, it's a religious calling. It's only the ones who expect to get everything for nothing who end up working in other fields.
Or, in some cases, blogging.
Eric Meyer is an associate professor of journalism at the University of Illinois; the vice president and co-owner of Hoch Publishing Co.; and the managing partner of NewsLink Associates.
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10 comments about 'Meyer: Employers have right to ban blogging'Eric, did you clear this by your management and partners at University of Illinois, Hoch Publishing, and NewsLink Associates?
--Kynn
Posted by Kynn Bartlett at May 5, 2003 2:12 PM
Mr. Meyer, you write:
"If the creativity you thought you were hiring is being siphoned off by some outside activity, you have every right to ask that such activity cease.
...
Be a writer for my paper on my terms, or be a writer for your Weblog on your own terms. I don't want you splitting your creativity between them."
My opinion: Creativity is nothing that's in someone like water in a bottle. So it cannot be "siphoned out" or "splitted". On the contrary, creativity grows and gets bigger and better the more you use it. Not to mention the practice in writing.
Thomas Jungbluth, Freelance Journalist and Technical Author
Posted by Thomas Jungbluth at May 6, 2003 5:10 PM
Actually the Hartford Courant has done a pretty good job, over the past 15 years or so, to bring down its own reputation - a great paper gone trashy. News on the internet is going to finish the 'written'press.
Posted by Barbara at May 9, 2003 10:54 PM
Blogs are glorified diaries. Just because they are on the internet doesn't mean anyone is reading them.
Posted by Brandon at December 10, 2003 8:09 PM
My question is this:
If indeed newspaper writers only have the right to write when the newspaper says it's OK, how about personal, written diaries?
For the only difference between a written diary and a blog is that a blog is specifically meant to have an audience. That, and permalink.
As a newspaper writer, I have a major, major problem that my employer somehow has a monopoly on the entirity of my creativity. That by taking a job as a newspaper writer, I have somehow forfeited my right to write.
I can see the logic behind not trading on any celebrity created by the newspaper for you. But if in fact you are blogging as a private citizens, not as a member of your respective newspaper, and if you avoid commenting on the things you cover for that newspaper, I don't possibly see how the newspaper has the right to tell you you can't do it.
I sing in a band as well; that is a creative outlet, as well. Does the newspaper, then, have a right to prohibit me from doing this, if it "siphons" my creativity?
Posted by Gil at February 19, 2004 1:18 PM
I agree that creativity cannot be "siphoned" - it's more like a muscle that gets stronger and better the more you use it. I also think that it should be protected as free speech. But you can't have your cake and eat it too.
If you are going to list your private opinions as a private citizen maybe you shouldn't even put your place of employment on your site. A bit of anonymity and a well-placed disclaimer might solve the problem.
Posted by Kris at February 25, 2004 8:36 AM
Nice site.
Posted by how to buy a used car at November 14, 2004 12:20 AM
If a blogger is deliberately trying to tear down their employer's name (and exactly how many would waste time doing this), they don't need a blog to do so. They can create a website and say the exact same things, in a non-blog format. Not every blogger seeks to ruin their bosses, so blogging shouldn't be banned entirely.
By the way, I am a 16-year old who has been "blogging" since late 2003, and never have I mentioned any names of people if I sought to express any negative feelings toward them.
Posted by Kasumi at March 5, 2005 7:29 PM
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