Workplace & Social Media: ESPN Suspends Sports Guy's Twitter Two Weeks for Tweets

In a case of how the use of new social media by employees may present unforeseen problems for employers, ESPN has placed popular columnist Bill Simmons – known as “The Sports Guy” – on a two-week suspension from his Twitter account for violating the sports network's social media policy.

According to an article on HuffingtonPost.com, Simmons – author of “The Book of Basketball,” which recently reached #1 on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list – tweeted on Twitter that new ESPN Radio affiliate WEEI-AM in Boston employed “deceitful scumbags” after the radio station named him its “Fraud of the Week” on-air. Simmons has since told SportsBusiness Daily in an email that he handled the escalating situation “poorly.”

ESPN Radio and WEEI had announced a partnership in October and Simmons – a native of Massachusetts known for his brash, funny, and highly opinionated writings – criticized the radio station on Twitter a few weeks later when he tweeted: “WEEI's 'The Big Show' was apparently ripping me today. Good to get feedback from 2 washed-up athletes and a 60 yr-old fat guy with no neck.”

Responding to the suspension of Simmons from his popular Twitter account – which boasts over one million “followers” – ESPN.com editor-in-chief Rob King wrote a blog titled “On Tweeting Responsibly” explaining how ESPN has “internal guidelines” designed to “help maintain the credibility with which ESPN operates,” guidelines that are “equally important when participating in social media.” Since Simmons’ tweets about WEEI “fell short of those standards,” ESPN took “appropriate measures.”

While bad-mouthing or trash-talking between co-workers is nothing new, the explosion of social media usage by employees both on and off the job is largely unchartered territory for employers. Most employers and employees would agree that certain thoughts and feelings communicated about management, co-workers, or business partners should remain internal. However, new social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and YouTube are making it all-too-easy easy for people to make private, sensitive, and sometimes embarrassing company information very public.

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