The CBC’s revised social media guidelines took the form of principles rather than a list of do’s and don’ts, and the principles were the ones the broadcaster already applied to every other platform.
That consistency is the substance of them. The guidelines treat social media as important “for gathering information, as well as disseminating it”, then add that “when using social media as an information-gathering tool, we apply the same standards as those for any other source of newsgathering”. On publication the rule is stated flatly: “If we would not put the information on air or on our own website, we would not use social media to report that information.” That rules out passing on unconfirmed reports, and it marks a real difference in practice from the BBC, which had published unverified tweets alongside its own reporters’ material during the Mumbai attacks. The section on sourcing makes the same point again: the standards apply to all types of sources, including those arriving via social media, whenever they are used for newsgathering.
The section on personal accounts is where a principle-based document does the most work. It asks staff to “maintain professional decorum and do nothing that can bring the Corporation into disrepute”, and rather than banning opinion it warns that “the expression of personal opinions on controversial subjects or politics can undermine the credibility of CBC journalism and erode the trust of our audience”. Read one way that is guidance; read another it extends a professional code into a personal space, which social media makes hard to avoid.