The BBC rewrote its guidance on staff use of Twitter and other micro-blogging services, two years after a first version drafted before those services were widespread.
Four principles carried the document: participate in conversations online rather than broadcast messages at users; do not bring the BBC into disrepute; on moderation, “only police where we have to; trust our users where we don’t”; and be open and transparent. For an organisation with roots in a one-way broadcast era, the language of trusting users was the notable part: it treats social media as community and conversation rather than as a channel to control.
The specifics are where impartiality reasserts itself. On retweeting, the guidance warned that “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”, and told staff instead 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”.
The harder problem the document had to handle is that social media collapses the line between a journalist’s professional and personal identity. Its answer for on-air talent was a narrow carve-out: presenters of live chat, music and entertainment shows could refer on air to their personal micro-blogging accounts “where editorially justifiable”, as a personal tool and a way to gather instant feedback, but not as an official route into the programme.