It seems like employment lawyers are saying it every day, but it’s a cliche because it needs to be said: Consistency is a virtue. And also what will save you in employment law.
Take, for instance, CNN’s suspension of reporter Elise Labott. Labott shared a news article about the House passing the bill that would suspend the program allowing Syrian and Iraqi refugees to the U.S. yesterday morning,
House passes bill that could limit Syrian refugees. Statue of Liberty bows head in anguish @CNNPolitics https://t.co/5RvZwVftgD
— Elise Labott (@eliselabottcnn) November 19, 2015
Some applauded her stance, but others, not so much. Presumably someone at CNN felt that Labott had overstepped her bounds, and she issued an apology tweet hours later. She has also since been suspended for two weeks.
It’s been awhile since CNN’s social media policy has been public, but it’s hard to see how if the company would’ve been comfortable with editorializing on such a hot button topic if they expected their reporters to remain objective in public. Reporters, in particular broadcast news reporters, have a notoriously tricky relationship with policies like this: Editors and readers value their insight and knowledge, but media corporations as a whole are wary of social media and would prefer their writers weren’t bogged down in political (and public) squabbles on the Internet. CNN’s policy, at least in its iteration five years ago, took a strict approach, and specifically called on reporters and CNN employees not to comment on news or current affairs.
“If you publicly declare your preference for issues or candidates or one side or the other of the public policy issues CNN reports on, then your ability to be viewed as objective is compromised,” the policy reportedly read. “We appreciate that everyone has a life outside work and we encourage all of our employees to get involved with the issues that are important within their communities. That said, you need to avoid any appearance of bias or partiality. It’s just one of the responsibilities associated with working for a news organization.”
But as others on Twitter have pointed out, this is not the first time Labott had editorialized in her tweets. Not even the first time this week. And although the media tends to have a longer leash with their employment law and social media policies, the fact that Labott’s editorializing is fine when it’s seen as anti-Obama, but not when it’s seen as pro-refugee.
It’s true that social media policies—while increasingly common and necessary for companies to have—can often feel like a “damned if you, damned if you don’t” requirement, what with all the rules about what such policies can and can’t prohibit.
When it comes to enforcing malleable, changing policies like this, the best general rule is a consistent one: Be consistent with your application of the rule, as Robin Shea writes for Employment and Labor Insider:
Before you act, make sure you would have taken the same action against your best employee who did the same thing. Examine your conscience: if this were your favorite employee, and he had done the same thing, would you treat him the same way that you want to treat Joe? If so, then you are probably on solid ground. If not, then back off. You usually won’t go wrong being consistent.
Regardless of how one personally feels in the case of Syrian refugees, CNN’s actions to step in may have been ill-advised. While it allows Labott less political leeway than its more political hosts like Don Lemon, it seems that the CNN brass was a bit inconsistent with at least their attention if not their action regarding Labott’s Twitter feed. And if employers were to follow their example they could be leaving themselves open to problems. Media policies are really more art than they are science, but if you want to stay on the right side of the law make sure at the very least that policy enforcement is uniform.