Might be better suited for Great Debates, but I’ll start it here.
This came up in the MTG hearing, but I’ve seen it plenty.
A politician (or other famous person) says something inflammatory, stupid, or potentially criminal on social media.
The politician gets blowback.
The politician claims that many people handle their social media account, and they cannot be held accountable for what goes up on it.
Should politicians in fact be held accountable for their social media? If social media is part of the public forum, should politicians be allowed to insulate themselves from liability or accountability with the mere idea of a handler?
Obviously we have no idea what Twitter will look like a year from now, but if you have a “verified account,” the implication IMO is that everything going up on it is verified as your thoughts, opinions, and stance. It is you. Don’t hand it off to some intern or staffer with vague instructions to “sound like me.”
Politicians on both sides of the aisle should be responsible for their Social Media. It is similar to press releases. The Politician in question doesn’t typically deliver the press releases and could make the same lame claim.
Note: I think this does fit better in P&E than GD.
Agreed, and if a politician (or any celebrity) does actually wind up having a staffer post something on their social media account which the politician actually disagrees with, said politician should retract and repudiate that post immediately, and discipline or fire the staffer.
If it’s a year later, and you’re only making the “it was my staff” claim because you find yourself in trouble for it, it’s a transparently lame dodge.
Yeah, part of verification is formally acknowledging that the account is tied to you - I mean, you actually have to provide a government document to prove it’s really you, and that’s a strong linkage.
To make an analogy, in the workplace, in most cases if a subordinate does something dumb on your behalf, you get some potential absolution depending on the circumstances…but when the work product is public content/messaging, the assumption is that you’ve reviewed it, and it’s effectively all on you…no absolution there.
Yes, there’s some responsibility on the part of the politician. As mentioned above, if a staffer hauls off and posts something stupid (or maybe just goes rogue), you could cut the politician some slack provided he or she takes any and all appropriate actions immediately.
Whatever gets posted on the account is, presumably, to be taken as words actually written by the person whose name is on the account, even if, technically, someone else actually performed the physical task. The social media staff is speaking on their employer’s behalf.
A good analogy is the “I’m Joe Blow and I approve this message” blurb that all politicians have to put on their campaign ads. It says that the politician approves the message, even if they didn’t write it. The same assumption should be made for social media - the politician may not have written it, but certainly must have approved it. I agree that it’s a lame excuse to blame it on a staffer months later when what you posted comes back to bite you in the ass.
IMO if you’re going to deflect blame you need to sack someone.
An earlier version of this post had me not believing the politician, but some of them are so old, and I think of the elderly people I know, and I believe it.
It’s the distinction between blame and responsibility: you may not be to blame, but you are responsible to the extent that you employed someone who thought [whatever it was] a good idea. If you’re putting yourself forward as a legislator/supervisor of public services, then anything that reflects on your abilities at staff management is down to you.
When you think about it, “Their public messaging” is a huge part of what they actually produce. It’s their job, to convince voters to support them, so they can implement their agenda.
If they’re not responsible for such a huge part of their work product, why should we hire them? If a building contractor developed a habit of blaming all work defects on their hired carpenters, we’d pretty quickly decide to never hire their firm again.