10 Questions: Dave Matter on Mizzou sports – STLtoday.com

QUESTION: What is your take on the “stick to sports” debate when it comes to sports journalists? At what point is it too much on Twitter, Facebook, etc.?

MATTER: First off, I work for the Post-Dispatch, not Twitter. My Mizzou sports coverage in the pages of the P-D and on STLtoday.com have nothing to do with presidential politics and never have any leanings one way or the other. Social media is a different animal. If a Mizzou fan wants to follow me on Twitter, I’m under no obligation to censor my personal thoughts or feelings about politics, the weather, my favorite TV shows, food or the horrible things that happened in Virginia last week.

I have liked or retweeted politically driven tweets, but I can probably count on one hand the original tweets from my account that had anything to do with politics. And I’ve tweeted almost 55,000 times from that account. If somehow something I like or retweet on Twitter threatens someone else’s worldview, well, guess what, that’s not on me. This is one of the most fascinating aspects of social media: I follow 2,058 other Twitter accounts. And not once in nine years on Twitter have I ever told one of those 2,058 Twitter account holders what I want to see or not see coming from their account. I can’t process this audacity to censor or request to censor someone’s social media account that is free to follow or unfollow.

PHOTO: University of Missouri football players (from left) Keyon Dilosa, Desean Blair and Trevon Walters leave the athletic training complex in Columbia after a team meeting on Sunday, Nov. 8, 2015. The team went on strike to show their support for a race relations movement that is growing on campus.