Is Facebook helpful or harmful?
By Denis Johnson
Facebook could be a good thing or a bad thing for journalists or human beings in general, depending on how you look at it, but lets focus on journalists.
There have been journalists in the past who have taken heat for what they’ve put up on their social media page.
For example in an article called “Machine Bias” it said that last May a Boston poet and Black Lives Matter activist Didi Delgado said that all white people are racists. The post was taken down and the account was suspended for seven days.
When you are a public figure particularly a journalist you are serving to the public. So a journalist has to know that what he or she puts up may be controversial to the public or the company that they work for. Facebook and other social media outlets provide you to express whatever is on your mind but don’t take that to literally. Facebook has something that some people like to call ‘Facebook Jail”. That means that Facebook can suspend your account for a certain amount of days. Either someone on Facebook reported what you put up or Facebook thought what you put up was inappropriate.
There have been journalists in the past who has got into trouble for what they have put up on social media. For example Jemele Hill a former journalist/ television personality at ESPN has got into trouble for putting controversial tweets.
Saying that NFL fans should boycott cowboys merchandise due to the Cowboys players protesting back in the 2017 season. The NFL and ESPN are business partners. So ESPN doesn’t want it’s employees putting up tweets that isn’t sports related. Some journalists has to realize what they post on Facebook will get looked at by a lot of people. Even if you are a private citizen and you put up something that’s controversial, you can take a lot of heat for it.
Overall I believe that journalists do have a platform like Facebook or Twitter when it comes to giving out information. In the world that we live in today Facebook and Twitter is considered a news site to some people. Instead of reading the newspaper people will tend to go on a specific journalist Facebook or Twitter page for news. That’s all good, but when it comes to putting up something controversial that’s when that journalist has to realize that they are going to get a reaction from the public and it’s usually a negative one.
