I have some opinions on this, and I can tweet them, because I don't work for @axios: axios.com/fake-news-fix-… 
I'm curious about CEO Jim VandeHei's definitions of "blatant opinion", especially with the @washingtonpost is grappling with the murder of one of their columnists, the UN's urgent report on climate change, and rights for trans Americans are at risk of being wiped out completely.
Why shouldn't journalists express opinions based on reporting, research and histories of behaviour, such as politicians grossly misusing government funds, bad cover stories about bone saws, and expansions in internment camps for children separated from their families?
Jim VandeHei is also an older cisgender white male executive. Issues like access to abortion, lack of maternity leave, discrimination against Blacks, Asians, Latinx and Indigenous peoples, transgender rights, and sexism don't affect him the way it does for many other journalists.
For many people working in media, their tweets are how people read their bylines. Unlike VandeHei, most media people will never be on television. "Political views" can be as basic as "Black mothers do not deserve to die at higher rates" and "kids should not be held in cages".
Here's more "blatant opinion" based on reporting and data: The world is in genuine crisis if we continue to do little or nothing when it comes to rising temperatures. Hurricanes and other storms are getting much worse. Separatedd children are being hurt in those cages.
Axios is not the only media company whose senior management has said stuff like this about their social media policies. But it's in ignorance of many current events, and the issues affecting many demographics not reflected in the company's staff photo from earlier this year.
"Showing your hand" is also a really a weird thing to say. People like VanderHei already look at me and make unconscious assumptions all the time already based on my appearance, ethnicity and gender. Several studies have confirmed this.
"Showing your hand" also goes back to the "bias vs. expertise" argument, which is "what is considered left or political" versus "What does the reporting and data say? Why are certain issues now considered left in American politics?"
Why are the biases of straight white cisgender men considered objective and everyone else's is considered bias? If Axios' staff mostly interviews or features other white men working in politics, isn't that a kind of bias?
Most of the people I know who are super successful on Twitter did not become that way just by sharing stories. They did it by sharing their opinions, parts of their lives, and their reflections on lots of different things.
Twitter is bad for lots of reasons, but I love learning about people's pets, the gear they use, the places they visit, funny things they heard, jokes that made them laugh, experiences that were seared into their brains forever. That's what life is!
I like when you tell me mayo is bad (true) or I should be buying a certain pair of comfy pants. I have become friends with so many people off Twitter because I also learned about who they were outside of their work and their stories.
Many right-wing news organizations don't profess these kinds of limited social media rules about their reporters, which is how you get white men like Benny Johnson openly cheering the swearing in of Kavanaugh with beers, a hashtag and a sign that says "Own the Libs!"
When VanderHei refers to skeptics, is he talking about conservative and white news readers? Or the Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, poor, rural, LGBTQ+ members of the public who have been hurt by news coverage in the past?
The latter has many reasons to be skeptical of a news industry that continues to be primarily white and male, especially at senior management levels, and has often failed to cover issues like Puerto Rico, police violence against Black people, and trans rights for many years.
Be smart: We now know that Facebook has lied about how much it has influenced local and national elections, how much people were or were not watching video on its platform, significant data breaches, and how much it contributed to a genocide in Myanmar.
