I browsed through the Washington Post’s new social media guidelines for journalists this evening. These have been roundly criticized in multiple corners already, comments I do not want to rehash. Instead, I decided to have a little fun with the new rules.

1. “When using these [social media] networks, nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment.”

Drop the first clause, leaving: “Nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment.”

Well, I don’t think that a reporter who lets on to his or her political leanings or beliefs on social networks (or anywhere else, for that matter) thereby becomes impartial. Perfect. So now nothing a Post journalist does must denigrate their impartiality. I just demonstrated a scenario in which it wouldn’t.

2. “We never abandon the guidelines that govern the separation of news from opinion, the importance of fact and objectivity, the appropriate use of language and tone, and other hallmarks of our brand of journalism.”

I don’t see anything about enforcing a particular rule here. I only see guidelines. I don’t think too many people would argue that guidelines should be followed in every case. So, if a reporter has a good argument for why guidelines shouldn’t be followed (say, in the interest of transparency or “where we’re coming from”), they can both “not abandon” and not follow the guidelines.

Finally: “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.”

I actually can’t find a hole in this one. I will, however, reiterate something I believe others have mentioned but that I can’t pull up at the moment.

The Post must know that everything it writes could be perceived as having some bias that could be used to tarnish journalistic credibility among some group (which is all that’s required here, because the rules don’t specify whose judgement of credibility they’re interested in). So haven’t they just barred themselves from writing about anything? What on earth will the columnists say?

As Howard Kurtz noted, the weather may remain fair game. Though Kurtz himself appeared to disregard the rules with his Sunday tweet about William Safire’s death. Calling Safire “gracious” smacks of favoritism, does it not?

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