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Thursday, February 02, 2006
One Delaware reporter defends another
In a News Journal op-ed, reporter Al Mascitti sort of defends fired Dover Post reporter Matt Donegan. He also includes an interview with the Post's editor, Don Flood. Flood explains why he fired Donegan:
"Delaware is a small place," Flood said... "I knew this was going to get out there. I couldn't very well have Matt cover [an event such as] an NAACP meeting. If they objected, I couldn't very well say, 'Hey, you have to lighten up a little bit.' "
The greater sin, Flood said, involved the publishing of newsroom meetings. "I can't have somebody discussing comments in the office about some of the stories we're going to cover, and reasons we may or may not cover them."
But Mascitti concludes by saying he can understand why bloggers are upset. The internet, he points out, is one of the last places people have freedom of speech. He cites Cindy Sheehan's ridiculous arrest at the state of the union as evidence that our freedom of speech is eroding.
Ok, let me be clear. I agree that our freedom of speech in this country is imperiled. No argument there. But I don't have a lot of sympathy for this guy. Are any of us entitled to say whatever we want on our blogs regardless of how that will impact our employers? Unless our employers know and approve, I don't think we are. You wouldn't stand in front of your boss and badmouth your company and your job. You wouldn't badmouth the company on TV or in the newspaper and still expect to have a job. Why would you think you could do that online? Bloggers have to use common sense, just like anybody else. Maybe the courts will decide otherwise, but I doubt it.
That editor is absolutely right to ask how readers would feel if that reporter covered an NAACP meeting. That's a legitimate concern. Believe me, if I found out that a Burlington Free Press reporter talked about his job on some racy blog using his or her real name, I think that would be news. Likewise, if I found a blog by a Burlington cop, or an elected official, or a teacher that was racist or homophobic or pornographic, I would point it out. If you're putting one face out to the public, it's news when you show a different face online. Period.
That said, it's worth noting that the editor could have avoided this whole kerfuffle if he had known about Donegan's blog and talked with him about it. Why didn't the editor have a blogging policy in place? Why didn't he talk about online publishing etiquette with his staff? I'm sure they talked about the protocol for writing for other publications. It just boggles my mind that people in the media don't think about this.
February 2, 2006 at 12:05 PM in Media/Keeping an eye on the competition | Permalink
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Comments
Nice try. You state that "You wouldn't badmouth the company on TV or in the newspaper and still expect to have a job."
Matt Donegan didn't badmouth his company. Most of the things he blogged about had nothing at all to do with the Dover Post. So your argument is completely mute. In reality this is a heartless company who have fired many a good, hard worker simply because they're time was up or they were no longer wanted. Find out how many reporters have been there longer than a year or two. The numbers are disturbing.
Posted by: Nick | Feb 2, 2006 3:35:58 PM
You are being much too kind to Matt Donegan. Here are direct quotes from his blog:
•Thanks for that one, Doctor [King]. Now, because of you, I feel like I've been backed over by a black pickup truck today. Further, because of your
life, it would be considered a racial crime for me (aka 'The Man') to shoot up a house full of black people who don't know how to keep their car stereos, or voices, at a normal tone in a residential area in the middle of a black night.... It's that kind of dick move by black people that turns all other people into racists. I bet James Earl Ray was woken up by black people yelling pointlessly in the streets the night before he killed your civil rights leader."•"But hey, what else is new? This God awful feeling that has stayed on me all day like semen after a mid-afternoon root-pulling session."
•"I just typed a blog about my upcoming trip to wine country - the Finger Fucking Lakes - and this no good, cunt-faced, motherfucking whore bucket MySpace deleted it."
•"At least I inherited the mighty fallace [sic] gene, and therefore have no need for computer knowledge, or smarts of any kind for that matter."
"This year, I: Started to really hate my job; didn't get laid nearly enough (not by good looking girls, anyway);"•"That gym was a god damned zoo. I can't believe most of those animals are allowed out of the house. There was a mini-brawl between a couple of black fans (95% of them were black), some kid said he was going to steal my camera and half of the people there smelled like pot."
Donegan is a bigot. By defending him you support bigotry.
In no way is this the editor's fault. Despite his sophomoric blog, Donegan is an adult. He is responsible for his behavior.
Posted by: Jewel Grant | Feb 3, 2006 1:51:47 PM
I appreciate you both sounding off on this topic. Calling me a "bigot" is one way to approach this I suppose. However, I bet all the people of all different races who I've worked with over the years, mainly in the Air Force, will disagree. I take no exception to my blog being referred to as "sophomoric," but I'm hardly a bigot, sir.
Posted by: Matt Donegan | Feb 3, 2006 4:06:20 PM
You are a bigot, Matt Donegan. You've proven it. Despite the frenzied deleting of parts of your blog you've been engaged in, it still depicts a bigot. Even the 'small things,' do. For example, normal American twenty-somethings do not boycott any musical group with black members and declare themselves fans of Lynyrd Skynyrd, the rock band favored by white supremacists because it flies the Confederate flag and members have made racist remarks. Nor do they pal around with Michael Crook, a known white supremacist.
You've been extra busy deleting much of your blog. But, other people have been busy reconstructing it via Google archives and other sources. The evidence of your bigotry is not going to go away, so you might as well go on and accept you've been busted, by yourself.
Posted by: Jewel Grant | Feb 4, 2006 11:48:42 AM
"Why didn't the editor have a blogging policy in place?" Probably for the same reason he didn't have a policy for crapping in the lobby.
When did common sense, self-discipline and accountability become indefensible in this country? At the core of any society are the cultural and moral imperatives that allow it to function. Certainly, in a healthy society, these are challenged and modified as the society grows and matures. But in America today the challenge seems to be how low we can go. We do and say things just because we can.
All laws and freedoms are based on cultural assumptions. To codify every possible behavior would paralyse a society, yet this is where we seem to be heading. Our death spiral began when we stopped aspiring as a society to be better, but to proving we have the right to be worse.
Mr. Donegan's situation is not one of free speech, but of common sense. If he represented himself as "Matt Donegan, blogger" then no issue would be raised. But he chose to be "Matt Donegan, employee of The Dover Post, who is blogging about my assignments and the people I covered on those assignments."
If you don't want your mouth washed out with soap, don't swear at your mother. Isn't this just common sense?
Posted by: Jim | Feb 23, 2006 12:15:38 PM
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