For The Left, The Personal Is Political -- Until It Isn't

As we’ve noted before, one of the nice byproducts of social media such as Twitter is that it’s exposed the bias running throughout the staffers at legacy news organizations that still (sometimes at least) cling tenuously to holding aura of the penumbra of being “objective.” The latest example? The curious dissembling that Brent Baker spots from a Washington Post managing editor after letting it all hang out on Twitter:

A few weeks ago Washington Post Managing Editor Raju Narisetti rued in this tweet via his Twitter account: “We can incur all sorts of federal deficits for wars and what not. But we have to promise not to increase it by $1 for healthcare reform? Sad.” Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander cited the tweet in a Friday night blog post about how the newspaper has issued new guidelines, on the use of social network sites, which state “nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment.” That forced Narisetti to close his Twitter account. Alexander recounted:

Narisetti said today he now realizes that his tweets, although intended for a private audience of about 90 friends and associates, were unwise. They were “personal” observations, he said. “But I also realize that…seeing that the managing editor of The Post is weighing in on this, it’s a clear perception problem.”

On his defunct Twitter page, as captured by Google, Narisetti declared, as if he’d buy this contention from any politician (say, Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell and his 1989 college thesis over which the Post has obsessed): “My tweets have nothing to do with my day job.”