More on the NYT Twitter on Toyota

Cleveland Plain Dealer ombudsman Ted Diadiun has perspective Sunday about New York Times business reporter Hiroko Tabuchi, who posted Tweets about Toyota before and during the company’s news conference she covered.

Diadiun writes, “So when Tabuchi unburdened herself about Toyota, she wasn’t just griping to sympathetic colleagues about her problems. She was telling her nearly 5,000 ‘followers,’ and whoever else happened to be searching for tweets on Toyota, that she wasn’t exactly unbiased when it came to the story she was covering. That’s not good.

“The thing that tripped up Tabuchi was the failure to follow a newsroom commandment that ought to be tattooed on every reporter’s arm: When your fingers (or thumbs) are on a work-related keyboard, don’t joke, don’t flirt, don’t lose your temper, don’t be a wise guy . . . in short, don’t write anything in a story or e-mail, on Facebook or Twitter, that you wouldn’t want to see in the newspaper.

“None of that is to say that it couldn’t happen — or hasn’t happened — here or anywhere else. I just haven’t heard about it if it has. Every newspaper has rules and guidelines that try to cover that type of thing, but in the end it all comes down to the individual reporter (or tweeter) and his or her sense of professionalism.”

Read more here.