Personnel decisions are often more complicated than they appear to the public, but Lee seems to be in the right here. News organizations are not ordinary businesses. They have a duty to the public to inform and educate. What Rhonda Lee did in responding to those Facebook posts was correct misinformation on a Web page administered by the station as well as educate viewers about African American culture. Lee was using social media as a journalist; she did exactly what she should have.
But she shouldn’t have needed to do anything, because the station should have responded first, either by taking the comments down (most organizations have a policy of deleting racist, sexist, homophobic, and otherwise inappropriate comments) or by replying in a way that supported its African American staff members and viewers.
Because let’s not forget that, according to the US Census Bureau, just over half of Shreveport is black. Those African American viewers are watching the station and reading its Facebook page; letting racist comments linger is offensive to them and implies that the organization doesn’t respect its black viewers.
News organizations’ social media guidelines shouldn’t be about image control, and they shouldn’t be about gagging journalists. They should be about maintaining high standards of journalism. Lee did her job by correcting a cultural misapprehension. She should be applauded, not fired.
Racism is wrong and insulting. If KTBS does not want eployees to confront viewers about this they should do it as a company and sharply reject it. As it now stands it was acceptable to have a viewer ventilate raciial remarks but was viewed inappropriate when the the insulted employer correctly responded and defended herself. KTBL shame on you !!!
#1 Posted by josh king, CJR on Fri 14 Dec 2012 at 08:31 AM
Public figures and media folks are constantly criticized online, and sometimes that criticism is overtly sexist, racist and even life-threatening. While it's understandable that Ms. Lee would want to defend herself, engaging people who post that kind of stuff is not only unprofessional, it's dangerous. Once you start down that road, it never ends well. It should be handled by comment filtering, not direct responses.
She had been warned multiple times to stop sending out these responses, but she refused to stop. Frankly, I'm surprised that she reacted so strongly to the Facebook comments you quoted, which are pretty tame in comparison to the usual online trolling garbage. But she should have been suspended, not fired.
#2 Posted by Jassa Skott, CJR on Fri 14 Dec 2012 at 11:07 AM
Rhonda Lee responded graciously to the critic. There was absolutely nothing mean about it. The response was polite with manners. How on earth could she be fired over that? She has a right to respond to statements directed at her and she did so with class and civility. This astonishes me. KTBS needs to get a clue.
#3 Posted by Rev. Austin Miles, CJR on Fri 14 Dec 2012 at 03:19 PM
There is more to this story that hasn't been reportered.
Publicity campaign runs amuck and the mentally disabled are fair game
Meteorologist Rhonda Lee fails to disclose knowledge of viewer’s mental illness in hair debate
http://clicky.me/7One
#4 Posted by The Digital Texan, CJR on Wed 26 Dec 2012 at 12:03 AM