On Monday, the eve of Pennsylvania’s 2019 primary election, President Donald Trump staged a 2020 presidential campaign rally at the Williamsport Regional Airport in Montoursville. Just south of that airport flows, with exquisite indifference, the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.

The Susquehanna has been compared lately to impassioned political commentary on social media: about a mile wide, a few inches deep, choppy, rocky and completely non-navigable.

The analogy should not be lost on local politicians, some of whom appear confused in their certainty about navigating the rules, role and conventions of media and social media.

At almost exactly the same time that thousands of Pennsylvanians were greeting the president, Butler School Board Solicitor Tom King was back in Butler, delivering a primer to school directors about court cases involving public officials blocking individuals from their social media pages. The examples represented a broad range of legal precedent ranging from the Trump’s infamous tweets to a school board member’s Facebook page. Legal precedent, King explained, is that an elected official at any level can’t block people from seeing content related to their official conduct.

A dispute between directors that played out on social media — including, apparently, on the Butler Eagle’s Facebook page — precipitated the request for King to address the dispute.

In a related matter, a candidate for local office complained about how the Eagle reported her comments at a meeting of the municipal body to which she was seeking election. She wanted a letter published stating more clearly her position on the issue. This was five days before the primary, and the Eagle’s long-standing policy is to publish no political letters for two weeks before any election.

Here’s the long and the short of it. The First Amendment has never been more accessible to everyone, thanks to social media. The Eagle is not about to tell any politician what they can or can’t publish on their personal page, as long as it’s not slanderous or libelous.

Likewise, no politician should expect to have content published, unfiltered, in their local newspaper. A reporter’s job is to gather, verify and, interpret and analyze information.

Of course, if a politician must get across their message without any distortion, they can buy as much advertising space as their campaign can afford. It should be remembered that campaigns raise money specifically to spread the candidate’s message.

Social media has a role in local politics. Newspapers continue to have a central role, and always will. There’s some obvious overlap, but the roles — and rules — differ. And contrary currents can be very hazardous.