ESPN distributed new social media guidelines to its employees Thursday, which reinforced some existing rules about not breaking news exclusively on social media, respecting colleagues, and—oh wait, here’s a new thing: “Do nothing that would undercut your colleagues’ work or embroil the company in unwanted controversy.” The “unwanted” there is doing a lot of work. Unwanted for whom? The employee who feels so strongly about an issue, perhaps the direction his or her employer is going, that they use Twitter to provide their insight? Of course not. The controversies are “unwanted” for ESPN executives, who want to keep advertisers happy,...