Journos and “private citizens”

An interesting post on editorsweblog.org points to discussions in several places about how public journalists can be with personal views. The news hook is a Washington Post guideline for its journalists using social networks.

The discussion, predictably, wanders to whether bias is inevitable, always damning, and should be declared.

This quote from the editor’s memo, published on paidcontent.org, especially draws a line in the sand,  siding with the old-fashioned standard that some of us think should apply to reporters as they do to judges: “…. journalists are always Washington Post journalists’, and that, ‘[we must] relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens.