Washington Post says "Don't be a wise guy"

As we give up more and more of our privacy online, it's inevitable that our employers will become more and more interested in our private lives. But should they be able to control what we say?

This question came up a week ago, when The Washington Post suspended one of its sports columnists, Mike Wise, for something he'd written on his private Twitter account. One might expect the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech to apply here, but there are many ways of looking at this.

The Post says that even when he's off duty, Wise is a respected journalist and a Post employee. His Twitter page identifies him as such. Wise has 3,723 followers, but these include other newspapers, which take what he says to be legitimate inside information.

That's what happened when Wise posted this sentence: "Roethlisberger will get five games, I'm told." The reference is to the length of suspension given to Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger for allegations of sexual assault. At the time, Roethlisberger was told he would have to sit out six games. (These were later reduced to four.)

Wise's handle, MikeWiseguy, should be a tip-off not to believe everything he says. He's also a columnist, not a reporter. And here, he was just stretching the truth. But it was a hoax. Wise said that he was trying to test how "anyone will print anything".

"I tried to showcase the absurdity of bad journalism," he explained.

The Miami Herald, The Baltimore Sun and NBC-TV's Pro Football Talk blog quoted his statement about Roethlisberger.

"I just got an e-mail about guidelines"

As he was performing the hoax — attributing the rumor to "a casino employee in Lake Tahoe" — Wise didn't suspect what would happen next. Three hours after the first message had gone out, he tweeted: "I just got an e-mail about the Post's guidelines on the use of Twitter. Weird. I wonder why." That was his last post.

The fact is, the Post does have guidelines for its employees: "When you use social media, remember that you are representing The Washington Post, even if you are using your own account. ... All Washington Post journalists relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens. Post journalists must recognize that any content associated with them in an online social network is, for practical purposes, the equivalent of what appears beneath their bylines in the newspaper or on our website."

Wise agrees. He's accepted a one-month suspension from the Post.

"I tried to test the accuracy of social media reporting. Probably not the best way to go about [the] experiment," he wrote. "But in the end, it proved two things: 1. I was right about nobody checking facts or sourcing and 2. I'm an idiot. Apologies to all involved."

Correct, perhaps, but still a little scary — on all counts.