Reflection on Social Media Case 8: Pastor's 10% to God

This is a very interesting Case. I honestly don't know if I see one side as solely correct. I think Pastor bell was rude in making the comment and should be gracious in tipping. I am a firm believer in tipping however so I may be a little biased. However if the Restaurant had a privacy agreement than it one hundred percent makes sense that the employee was fired because they shouldn't have posted the picture. All around there isn't an easy answer as to right and wrong I think both players could have acted differently. As far as reputations go, the pastor shouldn't have expected the entire Applebee's staff get fired, she made the remark she should stand by her actions! If she didn't want something like that getting out she shouldn't have said it in the first place. This goes back to the Anthony Weiner post from last week. Own up to your actions. If the pastor had of said yeah I said that I was upset, It may not have become as big of a deal as it did. Due to her reaction it resulted in a young women losing her job. When it comes down to it the pastors reputation may have been damaged but she still got to keep her job while Ms. Welch did not. That is where I see issues with this story. However as we discussed in class this very well could have qualified for a few of the F words we discussed. This article goes into defamation a little further and explains how in order to claim a written post as defamation one needs to prove that it is false, harmed reputation, published to at least one other person, about you or your business specifically, made with some degree of fault and intention. This case would definitely fall into the middle three categories so it is logical that the pastor got her way. I still don't know if I think it was the right result for the situation though. This article talks about how while defamation is a very good thing in many cases, it can often cause a lot more harm that good in the journalism world. I think this relates perfectly to social media as well because so much of what we say on social media could be seen as negative and an individual attack. We need to be careful to allow freedom of speech but keep social media as a safe place where people don't have to worry about reputations being scarred.