The Washington Post’s Lack of Transparency

Dan Gillmor

The Washington Post – the once-legendary newspaper in the nation’s capital – continues to stumble and crumble along, the victim of an increasing number of self-inflicted ethical mistakes. A few months ago, it was about the egregious attempt by publisher Katharine Weymouth to sell her paper’s editorial influence to Washington lobbyists. Now, the Post has issued an edict that sharply restricts how its employees can express their opinions online.

The bosses at the Post sent around a memo recently of rules that read, in part:

Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything—including photographs or video—that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility. This same caution should be used when joining, following or friending any person or organization online.

When I read that, my first impression was that the Post’s “journalistic credibility” is already in tatters, thanks to the likes of Weymouth and her socialite crowd who have little experience in journalism. It’s almost as if they are, in their naive arrogance, working to kill the famous newspaper that is already on life-support because of a series of business mistakes over the last decade.

By restricting its journalists and employees from engaging in online social media, the paper clearly does not comprehend today’s culture of openness and transparency that’s a hallmark of online conversations and a mandate for corporate America to survive. We no longer live in a time when businesses or newspapers can control the conversation.

I believe that the people who run the Post, living in a cocoon of hubris, neither respect nor comprehend the power and influence of today’s evolving forms of discourse.

But, no one has summed up the Post’s latest mistake better than Dan Gillmor, one person I consider to be among the most knowledgeable and credible in the online world of communications. Click here to read his commentary about the Post.