Obama Facebook poll and Washington Post rules

The disturbing news of a poll on Facebook asking if President Obama "should be killed" points out the real questions around social media best practices and ethics. A developer created the poll, which was taken by more than 700 users. Choices in the poll were Yes, Maybe, If He Cuts My Health Care, and No. The results are not available, Facebook says, and the poll has been taken down and is being probed by the Secret Service.

Organizations like ESPN and, most recently, The Washington Post, have been busy composing restrictions on how employees use social media. It's understandable that organizations want to provide guidelines for employees and draw boundaries for how social media differentiates from their own mainstream media. (In the eyes of The Washington Post, staffers should post to social media as if their bylines were attached. I disagree.)

Since when have communications professionals been more concerned with covering their backsides than with using new tools to serve their audiences, report on the bad guys -- like creepy poll developers -- and provide ethical and laudable communications in the new forums? Preventative measures will fail against social media -- that river of free-flowing information is too strong for any dam. But real best practices, which use these tools for good, can ride the flow of that river. We need to provide good information, not focus on what might go wrong.

Some of the earliest and most crafty users of social media have been doing some of the worst stuff. The Obama poll isn't an isolated incident on Facebook (although it may be the worst). There are four polls that ask Which Serial Killer Are You? There are spam bots and sex bots and phony accounts and crooked apps. The problem isn't Facebook and Twitter. The same old hate and avarice have found new playgrounds. Fear and outrage that blame the messenger are, as always, missing the point.

The best way to address wrongdoing is to do right. The real ethical obligation of media companies is to provide good information, otherwise the creeps lead the way.

Corporations -- especially media outlets -- need to get beyond their fear of getting caught with a goofy tweet and start leading by example. We need to be proactive in communicating with ethics, not preventative in censoring employees. Expose the bad guys, report in new ways, and show the world how this new media can be used right.

The real best practices are not "how to protect my company." We need a Society For Social Media Ethics that covers more than one industry.

Rules that show how journalists or PR people should behave, and focus on what they shouldn't do, are missing the point. We need something that shows how all users can best use Facebook and Twitter and the rest, and media are the best people to provide that.

Communications people need to look beyond what media should not do, and start leading by example in a new way.