In my original post, I suggested that journalists could use "NT" to declare their lack of endorsement for the statement they are reposting:

Much of the response was supportive of the idea.

But more in-depth discussion arose among those who think this wouldn't help.

GigaOM writer Mathew Ingram was among many who said journalists are trying to solve the wrong problem:  "All we really have to do is admit that journalists of all kinds might have opinions, instead of trying to pretend that they don't, or trying to force them not to."

Others on Twitter had similar criticisms. 

Robert Hernandez suggested that journalists are wrongly looking at social media as something that must be bent to their conventions. Instead, he wrote in a comment, "journalists need to adapt to social media and embrace the larger community's language, not create its own."

Robert Knilands responded with a defense of the "traditionalist" concerns: "The argument that we can't debate this because it gets in the way of 'real' arguments is not very substantive. AP and others have created guidelines. Sounds to me like there's an issue here, but the people who pant heavily about the 'benefits' of social media probably don't see it."

Tyler Angelo reminded us that there is another option for journalists who are squeamish: "If this is a big issue to one's conscience, then simply don't retweet something." That's a fair point, but as my original post noted the goal is to help journalists use Twitter, not abandon it.

Cory Bergman suggested that journalists think of tweets the same way they do quotations in a story. "Journalists are overthinking this, as always. A retweet (manual or native), is just simply passing along something you saw. As journalists, we pass along different voices, different opinions. Is adding a quote in a story an implicit endorsement? A sound bite?"

Whichever side you fall on, it seems clear the discussion will go on. Even as this debate was occurring Tuesday, Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin took heat from the Post ombudsman for retweeting an anti-Palestinian message from a board member of the Emergency Committee for Israel.