The BBC published new social networking guidance in March 2008 in two parts: how the corporation should approach such sites, and how staff should use them.
The institutional half was read here as brand protection tempered by some manners. It told programme teams to “be sensitive to the expectations of existing users of the specific site. If we add a BBC presence, we are joining their site rather than the opposite”, and warned against a presence tied to the run of one programme: staff should not give users the impression the BBC wants “a fully interactive profile or page if that page is then neglected or abandoned”. The part worth crediting was recognising that an online community does not exist to promote programmes.
The personal-use half was about reputation. It noted that the openness of such sites lets third parties collate large amounts of information, and proved it on the BBC’s own Facebook network: among its 11,899 members, The Shawshank Redemption was the most popular film and eight per cent listed their politics as liberal. David Jordan, director of BBC editorial policy and standards, said the guidance was common sense: it “does not restrict BBC staff from conducting legitimate activities on the Internet”, but does raise awareness of how crucial the corporation’s reputation for impartiality and objectivity is.
The gap was the live one: nothing covered journalists taking material off such sites, days after the press had worked through Ashley Alexandra Dupre’s MySpace profile during the Spitzer scandal. The BBC had been debating that; these guidelines did not settle it.