Dear Tweeter-Haters

via CNBC:

If someone were to value Twitter for its sports application alone, yesterday was the single most damaging day for the brand.

It started with more teams banning players from tweeting during team business hours, continued with a more stringent policy by ESPN on its reporters conduct on the site and eventually ended with the news that 10 NFL teams were not allowing reporters to tweet from open, public practices.

I guess McCarthyism is alive and well. ESPN as well as the NFL and the Marines has banned the use of Twitter for anything but professional uses. In a landmark decision, the Worldwide Leader in Sports and Bullshit issued a statement to all of its employees saying that personal and non-professional tweets would be considered a breach of their employment. In the NFL, Pro Bowl cornerback Antonio Cromartie was fined $2500 for tweeting about the food at the Chargers practice facility. And in the Marines, Twitter along with Myspace (who really still uses it) and Facebook were banned citing that social media sites "are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure."

My question to all of these authorities is this: when do your powers as an employer end? Is it really that serious that a player criticized the food? Chances are that if he tweeted it, that it's probably true. If you guys are scared that all of this unadulterated press, then maybe you should fix the things that are making people tweet all that negative shit. To me it just seems like you guys have the non-digital age stick-up-the-ass syndrome. You fear what you can't understand and thus ban it. What's funny is that somehow the truth will find its way out. Whether it's a new social media site (that probably will get banned too), or humans develop telekinesis soon, the newfound free speech of media and sports figures will find its way to the light. Hopefully you guys don't go all Adolf on us....