NYT appoints Mideast journalist social media minder over controversial musings

                                                      
Social media crisis management

While in Gaza reporting on the recent Israeli attack there, Judi Rudoren, the Jerusalem Bureau Chief for the New York Times, wrote several Facebook entries that caused substantial controversy.

 "When I talk to people who just lost a relative, or who are gathering belongings from a bombed-out house, they seem a bit ho-hum," she said on her Facebook page.

The comments came off as insensitive and the reaction was sharp, not only from media pundits, but also from dismayed readers.

A critic wrote: "It's been observed that war makers can dehumanize an enemy by making their cultural values seem bizarre. The specific notion that Muslims love death and thus don't grieve their civilians has long been used to justify violence against them and to dehumanize them."

Rudoren reacted by extensively engaging her critics on Twitter and denied the meanings attributed to her. 

Ironically, the journalist had previously been criticized by Israel supporters such as Jeffery Goldberg who demanded that Rudoren stop using Twitter based on concerns that she was engaging Israel critics too much! 

And now her paper, concerned about correspondents airing unfiltered and unedited thoughts, is ” taking steps to make sure that Ms. Rudoren's further social media efforts go more smoothly. The foreign editor, Joseph Kahn, is assigning an editor on the foreign desk in New York to work closely with Ms. Rudoren on her social media posts.”

Is this overreacting? sugarcoated censorship? Do they have a right to stifle the field reporter who is giving her readers first hand candid accounts?

I understand the Israeli-Palestinian issue is a hot tin roof. It has already cost two top journalists their jobs over comments made on Twitter and elsewhere.

You are also told that journalists should not come through as activists taking sides. Yet such decisions take all the fun out of social media by turning otherwise authentic thoughts into clinical, overly PC exhausted lines which could have been uttered by anyone, even a machine if you will.

I think the fact that Rudoren herself engaged with the critics in healthy dialog was enough to handle the crisis and the paper did not have to single her out over social media postings. They could have said that everyone is getting some orientation, and worked on a social media policy for the staff to avoid future blunders.

As long as her published reports are balanced and cover both sides of the conflict, the paper can step aside and watch its ambassadors work the virtual room and mingle with the crowd. Reporters of such caliber are not kids on the playground. They are responsible grown-ups and can handle criticism. The paper just needs to issue a disclaimer and say the opinions aired outside the paper are their own.

But then, they mainly owe their allure and influence to the job. Is there a safe shade of gray somewhere in between?

(Disclaimer: the reference to 50 shades of grey does not mean the blogger is a fan. In fact, she has not hated a mainstream hit so intensely in a long time. And she is not a prude, nor a sniffy highbrow. She loves Belle de Jour and Marian Keyes.)