The summit also prompted a lively discussion on Twitter, under the hashtag #BBCsms.

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During my time covering the North Africa for the BBC in the early 1990s, I visited Libya a couple of times. One of my TV reports from the time sought to explore how Gaddafi was trying to shape Libyan society.

Though it is from December 1994, I am sharing the video as think it helps us understand what life was like under the Libyan ruler.

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As the BBC correspondent in the region, I visited Libya twice and interviewed Gaddafi during one of these trips.

It was, by far, the strangest interview I have ever done.

We were on standby all day until the call came late in the evening that Gaddafi was ready. We were taken to barracks in the capital Tripoli and escorted to a tent in the grounds where the interview would take place.

Gaddafi arrived shortly afterwards, wearing platform shoes that ensured he was the tallest person in the room.

Throughout the whole interview, he did not acknowledge myself or my camera operator, both of us Westerners.

During the interview itself, Gaddafi never once made eye contact with me. It was disconcerting to interview someone who seemed to pretend that you were not there.

I got a sense during the interview of a disconnect between the world of Gaddafi and the world outside of Tripoli. It almost seemed as if his perception reality was at odds with everyone else’s.

There is a clip from the interview in the news piece that provides a little flavour of the interview.

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The Guardian reports that BBC director general is looking for additional cost savings of 20% – about £400m – over the next six years.

One of the ways Thompson plans to cut costs is by reducing the amount spent on online services by 25%.

This might sound like a drastic saving. But it masks the fact that online is the poor relation when it comes to BBC finances.

According to the BBC Annual Report for 2009/2010 (PDF), the corporation spent £199.3 million on online.

A cut of 25% would free up just under £50m. Given the BBC’s total budget of £3.5 billion, the BBC would be shaving just 1.4% off its budget.

By comparison, television accounts for £2.3 billion, while radio takes up £603 million.

Just a 2% cut in spending on TV services would save approximately the same amount as a 25% cut in online.

TV and radio are far more well established than online, so it is much harder to take on and change deep-rooted practices.

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There are three specific entries that offer valuable advice to journalists.

The guidelines on the use of photos sourced from social media and personal websites notes that the BBC should consider the sensitivities in using them, even though the images have been published online.

It urges journalists to consider whether someone intended the image to be available to a wider public:

The publication of a picture on a personal website or social networking site does not necessarily mean the owner of that picture intended it to be available for all purposes and circumstances – or understood that it could be.

This is an issue the BBC has been considering for a while, and highlights one of the tensions with social media. People expect their content to be available to a public, often of friends or family, rather than to the public.

There are also guidelines on the personal use of social media which are refreshing simple and thoughtful.

Rather than setting out specific limits on what staff can and can’t do, the guidelines urge people to “be mindful that the information you disclose does not bring the BBC into disrepute.”

BBC concerns about impartiality are also apparent in the guidelines on the use of social media services like Twitter:

When forwarding or “retweeting” messages, care should be taken that it does not appear that the BBC is endorsing a particular opinion.

Services like Twitter provide a powerful platform to distribute content, so staff are encouraged to link to BBC content “to encourage users to consume more BBC content.”

The guidelines also reflect that the BBC is conscious of its position as a media powerhouse.  In the advice on joining social sites:

We should “go with the grain” and not alienate existing users by giving the impression of seeking to impose ourselves on them and their space.

This is a tacit acknowledgement that different social media sites and services have their own rules and patterns of behaviour. The BBC is essentially a guest in these spaces.

Overall, the guidelines strike a balance between BBC concerns about impartiality and fairness, and the participatory and collaborative ethos of social media.

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The 152-page report brings together 42 essays were written by news executives, digital thinkers and educators from across the world.

My attention was drawn to a provocatively entitled entry, The Future of TV News Belongs, in Part, to Multi-Platform Video, written by my former boss, the editor of the BBC News website, Steve Herrmann.

In the essay, Steve outlines the forms of video have worked for the BBC online. One of the most successful formats is the short news clip that shows something visually compelling.

These work particularly well when they are embedded in a related text news story. Traffic to video doubled within a year after the BBC News site started embedding video.

These short video clips ‘show the story’, whereas traditional TV news pieces tend to have a reporter ‘telling the story’. Online, there is often no need for the reporter as an intermediary, as a user will have already read the story.

Steve concludes, “news and sport video clips now tend to get more traffic overall than long-form news programmes on the BBC’s live and on-demand online TV service iPlayer”.

Traditional, longer-form news video “is not – for now anyway – proving that compelling for news consumers online.”

While recognising that traditional TV news skills will continue to matter, Steve suggests:

The linear broadcast could become a bit like a trailer for the fuller, more detailed and potentially richer treatment of the story, which can be made available in the space which on-demand platforms can offer.

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The visualisation shows Thompson placing an emphasis on British television, public service, British public and licence fee.

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He looked at how the relationship between BBC online journalism and ctizenship during the 2005 and 2010 UK General Elections.

In a quick presentation, Thorsen explained how civic engagement as a key of the BBC mandate reflected in its election coverage online.

For the 2010 election, the BBC viewed election news as a product. He described how the 2010 election website was a pan-BBC project, compared to a more fragmented approach in 2005.

One of the aims was to distinguish web coverage from broadcast output as user research had shown that audiences were unaware of original features online.

Another issue was a strategic discussion of how the BBC covered politics online in an attempt to attract more people to politics.

Thorsen showed a BBC live updates page, incorporating reports from BBC journalists, user emails and tweets. But it was based on a manual process, with an individual cutting and pasting bits of HTML content into a static page.

Everything was verified and checked by a second pair of eyes, said Thorsen, usually a person looking over a journalist’s shoulder.

For the 2010 election, the BBC outsourced the moderation of comments, with the BBC monitoring the debate online to select and highlight some comments.

Thorsen highlighted the tensions at the BBC over user contributions.

He found in some BBC journalists that some described UGC and comments as an example of civic engagement online, while other described it as “utter shit” and “a complete waste of time”.

Similarly, the team behind video contributions If I was Prime Minister saw this as the pinnacle of an opportunity for citizen to express their political views. But others were more sceptical.

This was a brief but fascinating insight into Thorsen’s research.

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The updated guidance take account of the spread of services like Twitter which were not widespread when the advice was first published in 2008.

As well as offering specific advice on friending and retweeting, the guidelines set out the BBC’s social media principles:

• With conversations, participate online; don’t “broadcast” messages to users
• Don’t bring the BBC into disrepute
• With moderation, only police where we have to; trust our users where we don’t
• Be open and transparent in our social media dealings

These offer a broad and practical approach to social media.  They acknowledge that social media is about community and conversation, rather than about controlling content.

It is good to see an organisation like the BBC, with its roots in a patriarchal, broadcast era, talking about trusting users and entering into a dialogue with them.

Some of the specific advice to staff reflects the BBC’s concerns about editorial impartiality. For example, when it comes to retweeting, the guidelines say:

In some cases, you will need to consider the risk that “retweeting” of third party content by the BBC may appear to be an endorsement of the original author’s point of view.

Instead, the BBC advises staff to add “your own comment to the “tweet” you have selected, making it clear why you are forwarding it and where you are speaking in your own voice and where you are quoting someone else’s.”

This strikes at the heart of one of the tensions in social media for professional media organisations: Social media blurs the line between the professional and the personal.

The guidelines seek to make some distinctions here, especially when it comes to on-air talent, where personality plays a big role:

Presenters of live chat shows, music and entertainment shows may sometimes refer on air, where editorially justifiable, to their personal microblogging accounts. This is where the account is used as a personal tool by the presenter; it should not be used as a normal or official means of contacting the programme but it can be used to gather instant feedback by the presenter.

The BBC, as other media organisations, is adapting to a social media ecosystem, so it is likely that the guidelines will evolve over time. But the general principles set out are a good place to start.

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The most common by far was “licence fee” mentioned 116 times. Next was “public space” with 60 mentions and “public service” at 47.

As for the two digital stations facing closure, 6 Music was mentioned 21 times and Asian Network 13.

Click on the image for an interactive version of the graphic on the ManyEyes’ site.

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