Baumeister on Twitter-Blocking, Obit-Charging, and His Feud with that Sioux Falls Paper

Greetings Blogophiles!

Today, we are going to have a little lesson on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the freedom of speech, and why not being able to post on Facebook or Twitter probably not not an abridgement of that right.

Also, I will tell you about how my nearly 20-year old battle with “that Sioux Falls paper” has been renewed (I would refer to it by name, but every time I do, Cory changes it, anyway).

First, it seems like we are having a bunch of statewide issues in the past week with people being upset about not being able to post on someone else’s private page on Facebook.

Scroll down the blog just a bit and read Cory’s post on the person suing Stace Nelson over being blocked from his Facebook account.

In Sioux Falls, something similar is being seen with City Councilwoman Theresa Stehly and people not being able to post or see full content on her Facebook page.

And this leads me to my battle with that Sioux Falls paper. So as not to get too far off topic and bore people our readers who are here strictly for the politics, I will save the full story until the end.

But what may have started my feud back up was me making a post on the “Sioux Falls Politics” page in reference to the Stehly matter, and I had Joe Sneve, a reporter with that Sioux Falls paper, snip back at me saying, “The courts would say otherwise.”

I followed that with a long explanation explaining how the situations were completely different. I am guessing my explanation made sense, as I never heard back from him.

There are many people out there that believe (wrongly) that the First Amendment means they can say anything, anywhere they want.

In truth, the First Amendment only applies to laws the government can make in blocking what people can say.

Cory refers to three different items that have an effect on social media postings:

1. The President blocking people from following him on Twitter,
2. The Virginia court case where an elected official set up a page for political discourse, as part of her newly elected job, and
3. Mike Rounds blocking people from his Twitter account @SenatorRounds.

These are clearly First Amendment cases, because…

1. EVERYTHING a President of the United States does is paid for by the taxpayers, his computer, his cell phone and every minute he draws a breath while serving as President. Ergo, his Tweeting done at 3 a.m. while sitting on his White House “throne” is being paid for with taxpayer money, and blocking anyone from reading that or discussing that in the forum created is a definitely a violation of the First Amendment.
2. As the court decision Cory posts references, Phyllis J. Randall, who was elected chairperson of the Board of Supervisors in Louden County, Va., set up a Facebook page to so people could interact with the county. To make it more official, she named the page “Chair Phyllis. J. Randall,” thus genuinely tying it into her political office, again, making the ability to interact with the site a First Amendment issue.
3. Cory refers to our own U.S. Sen. Marion Michael Rounds blocking people from his Twitter account. Like a President, a Senator is paid by the U.S. government, which means a Senator from South Dakota is paid by taxpayers in California, as the income tax revenue all goes into one pot and is not separated by the states it comes from. I don’t really know how expense accounts work for people in Congress, but I do know that each office is budgeted so much money, so I would imagine the ways Rounds connects with his social media pages is also paid for by taxpayers. Again, making his blocking people on his @Senator Mike Rounds page a first amendment no-no. (Plus, he is also using his political title as part of the page).

Stace Nelson and Theresa Stehly are part-time politicians and while their social media pages may include political discourse, they are still private pages.

To get on those pages, a person has to send a “friend” request and be accepted. The page’s owner can do different things to the privacy settings on a Facebook page to allow how posts are made public.

A Facebook member can even set up a totally open page that can be “liked” or “followed”; however, the administrator of that page still retains rights to control what is there.

For example, Sioux Falls Councilman Greg Neitzert, whom Sneve quotes in his article about blocking, has two Facebook pages. One, “Councilor Greg Neitzert” would seem to have totally open settings for reading and posting.

He also had his personal page. “Greg Neitzert,” and the settings are such that anyone can see his page, but only accepted “friends” can post.

While the quote Sneve used from Neitzert says that he has “never blocked anyone on his Facebook page,” I wondered if Sneve bothered to do his homework ahead of time on the number and type of pages Neitzert has and which “Facebook page” he wasn’t blocking them from?

I questioned Sneve about this, and I explained that not accepting a friend request and blocking someone is just a matter of semantics, which amounts to the same thing.

I don’t know how he asked questions, but unless Sneve specifically asked about the number of pages and privacy settings, the people he was asking questions of could not have been expected to consider those things in giving their answers.

Now, in one of my related posts, I did question the logic a politician would use in blocking any potential voters from social media, but I would suspect the people being blocked are not actual constituents or would never vote for them, anyway.

On the lighter side…I told you I would get back to the story of my war with that Sioux Falls paper.

This goes back my very early days as publisher and editor of the Yankton County Observer in 2001. As a good local community newspaper, we never charged for printing obituaries.

As far as I know, that Sioux Falls paper was the first newspaper in South Dakota to start charging for obituaries.

When my father died in 1997, there was no charge for printing his obituary. However, the obits were printed in a smaller than regular type size with tighter leading.

However, at some point around the turn of the century, they started charging for obits. As my sources told me back then, the order came down from parent company Gannett that by charging a column-inch rate for obits, they would stand to make over $1 million in revenue per year. As a part of this, the paper started increasing the type size so the copy in the obits would run for more inches.

At that time, I was naïve enough to believe running a community newspaper should be about bringing people the news and not making money. Most of the people I have come to know over the years in the South Dakota journalism community believe the same thing.

Anyway, because I was offended by this practice, I wrote an editorial condemning the practice of charging for obits in that Sioux Falls (or any other) paper.

Now, after seeing this, their then-publisher called me up. Did he introduce himself? Did he welcome me to the publishing brotherhood? NO!

But in his best imitation of a bully, he demanded I print a retraction, even though he well knew that everything I wrote was truthful.

Those that know me, know that I do not suffer bullies, so Mr. Big City Publisher, who thought he’d get a new guy to back down, pretty much got told, in much nicer terms, to slide a well-greased cylindrical rod up his backside repeatedly.

I never spoke to that publisher again after that, nor did I print a retraction, nor did he sue me.

But, even though we found ourselves in the same room on several occasions, he never apologized, either.

However, he moved on, and that Sioux Falls paper was then run by the likes of Randall Beck, Maricarrol Kueter, Patrick Lalley and others whom I thought were all amazing journalists.

Today, I still think highly of the two or three local writers that Sioux Falls paper still employs, but I do have a problem when I see things turned into copy that are not newsworthy.

To that end, I have been after Cory to move to Sioux Falls and go into the newspaper business with me, but for whatever reason, he won’t leave Aberdeen!