Fallen Leafs

Drunk Jays Fans posted an excellent take on the recent Major League Baseball’s stance on limiting their beat writers to use their twitter accounts for anything other than baseball. Silently and swiftly, MLB.com writers who revealed such a ban have had those relevant twitter messages deleted, along with any messages that promoted their newly-made personal twitter accounts.

The absolute denial by Major League Baseball of such a moratorium even existing is what grates me the most. Forget for a moment how ill-advised and antiquated the idea of muzzling beat writers is in a social media perspective. The hope that Major League Baseball can play the innocence card and maintain plausibility, which would eventually lead to indifference (while likely true), is not only arrogant, but patronizing. Despite clear evidence of Major League Baseball’s wish to control and monopolize all of their content, their ironclad position on this issue shows how out of touch Major League Baseball can be.  

How difficult would it be for Major League Baseball to provide a simple statement about maintaining objective reporting as the crux of their twitter takedown? While the notion of unbiased journalism would still be pure nonsense, at least Major League Baseball would garner a more favourable response. Even if readers resignedly accepted Major League Baseball’s ignorance to social media, offering pointed denials and vigorous head-shaking without an explanation why is a benefit to no one.