Why Journos Shouldn't Be Muzzled On Twitter [Opinion]

In recent developments that will probably serve as a template for journalism schools, UK-based media organisations Sky News and BBC laid down stringent guidelines on Twitter use for correspondents, news reporters and producers. Sriram Sharma looks to make sense of the burning question: Should journalists tweet breaking news before filing an exclusive?

Seasoned news hounds will attest that news travels faster on Twitter than any other medium. For many journalists, it has replaced the RSS feed as a means to digest a firehose of news and map out the trending stories of the day. Case in point: news of Whitney Houston's death broke on Twitter 45 minutes before mainstream media filed a story. Sohaib Athar, aka @ReallyVirtual live tweeted the arrival of a chopper at midnight that killed FBI's most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, an achievement that made him a minor celebrity, with over 74,000 followers.

Joji Philip, Telecom reporter for the Economic Times was first at the scene of the blast in New Delhi earlier this week, when a Toyota Innova carrying an Israeli diplomat burst into flames after an explosion. He posted a photo on Twitter, which was used by CNN-IBN, ABC News, and scores of other channels, who attributed the pic to him, while failing to mention the banner under which he writes.

With a global pool of 100 million active users, Twitter is an indispensable broadcast tool for journalists and media companies with a modicum of net savvy. The service manages to embed itself into the news narrative and generates reams of bloggable content and analytics on what the hivemind is thinking. For Twitter-savvy journalists, their social media Klout score is an asset, but some leading news outfits feel that it goes beyond their call of duty.

UK-based Sky News put a muzzle on their staff last week in an email that advised them not to retweet rival journalists or “people on Twitter”, or tweet outside of their area of coverage, or tweet about personal or non-professional subjects on their work accounts. What's more, staff must always pass breaking news lines to the news desk before posting them on social media networks.

BBC's social media editor, Chris Hamilton, soon revised breaking news guidelines, which essentially says correspondents must first get copy into the newsroom before it reaches Twitter. However, BBC's rules are less stringent, as they allow the journalists to file a story into to BBC's newsroom system at the same time they post it on Twitter. Out of these two, Sky News comes off as a draconian and out of touch, while BBC's position, thanks to a technological workaround seems somewhat acceptable.

Here are some reasons why Sky News is clearly out of line from a moral and philosophical perspective, and clearly not the kind of template that social media editors at other news outlets should emulate.

1) Not to retweet rival journalists or “people on Twitter”.
Personally, I think it's a jaundiced view to see other journalists as rivals. Sharing and RTing links is seen as good karma, which comes back in spades when you have a genuine exclusive of your own. A ban on retweeting news from other broadcast media outlets undermines the point of social media, which should be a free place to engage, debate, and come up with new angles to a breaking story. Twitter is a tool for collaborating and associating with others, and to reduce journos to uni-dimensional characters who only tweet stories from their content farm would make for a poor show pony that nobody would want to follow. Most journalists would probably respond by creating a secondary twitter ID that's far from the roving eyes of the news organisation.


2) Not to tweet outside of their area of coverage.
Another attempt to reduce journalists to professional talking heads that stick to their beat. If taken at face value, this means Sky News journalists cannot share jokes, a mirthful or flattering review of a movie they saw, not unless they're the designated film critic.


3) Not to tweet about personal or non-professional subjects on their work accounts.
It's like Sky News does not want its journalists to get a life on Twitter, or transmit any piece of information that doesn't seem befitting of the designation granted to them. Alternatively, a simple disclaimer that says "Any views expressed here are my own" should suffice.

 

4) Always pass breaking news lines to the news desk before posting them on social media networks.
A journalist's first priority should be to get the story out first, using whatever medium he/she has at his/her disposal. Twitter just happens to be the quickest, low-bandwidth broadcast tool, and is embedded on almost all smartphones and feature phones today. It's an invaluable tool to share an eye-witness account of a breaking news story, say a bomb blast or accident. If the journalist doesn't tweet the news/photo, you can be sure others will beat him/her to the punch.

The Way Forward:
Instead of trying to put a leash on journalists with guidelines on Twitter usage, (a proven media minefield that damages credibility on free speech and self-censorship grounds), media conglomerates should consider co-opting it, especially if they have any ambitions terms of nurturing a strong social media brand. If I were asked to formulate a social media strategy for breaking news around Twitter, it would roughly be something like this.

a) Consider offering in-house staff year-round nation-wide 3G plans along with a smartphone capable of 1080p recording.
b) Use a "technology" similar to BBC, which doesn't require a budget - Twitter feeds can be aggregated on RSS, and routed to the Editors' inboxes.
c) Use the official Twitter ID as the listening post, and RT: all breaking news stories from in-house journalists/producers/bloggers/reporters.
d) Consider using embeddable widgets to promote notable tweets and in-house journalists on Twitter.

Finally, since so much of news boils down to aggregation, when using content from a tweet, clearer attribution should be given to both individuals and the organisations they work for, especially if they are already working for a major news channel/publication and it clearly says so in their profile.

 

 

 

February 14'th is also Free Speech Day, pick up your free poster here.