Comments on: Sky News bans reporters from retweeting from "professional" accounts

By: scatterfingers

scatterfingers — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:20:00 +0000

It’s about making sure that their other properties (which they make money from) aren’t upstaged by the web (which they don’t).

By: Dom Fletcher

Dom Fletcher — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:58:00 +0000

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16946279 - Some context

By: Mordicai

Mordicai — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:43:00 +0000

Oh…okay? That doesn’t seem particularly noteworthy. A policy of conduct is…fine? Not using official accounts for personal tweets or for retweeting doesn’t seem unreasonable?

By: neil mccomb

neil mccomb — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:39:00 +0000

I think the point here is that those who use twitter well usually adopt a collaborative approach. It gives an impression that it’s the news, or at least good journalism that’s important and not the dictates of the parent company.

The thing I thought most interesting about the email sent to SKY reporters isn’t mentioned in this post though. They aren’t allowed to break any stories on twitter. They have to first contact the News Desk before tweeting. This is presumably to get permission for a story but will surely lead to other organisations getting the scoop.

By: Tom Hiles

Tom Hiles — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:24:00 +0000

This seems sensible. Could Cory explain what we’re meant to take from this post, or should we expect more posts on corporations’ social networking policies?

By: darkjayson

darkjayson — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:20:00 +0000

People look to offical accounts from any media source as offical and therefor true.

So there not allowed to relay news from unconfirmed sources be it other journalists where they don’t have access to the source of the information, the public where they can not confirm the accuracy of the information or for items that they are not qualified to write about, i.e. a sport reportor posting polical news. Also any personal posts have nothing to do with there work so should not go in there work accouts but in there own personal accounts.

All that seams resonable I think the story here is that a normal boring memo gets leaked.

By: skeletoncityrepeater

skeletoncityrepeater — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:17:00 +0000

Maybe someone at the organization is trying to build their reputation in a journalistic direction. I am not trying to appear contrarian and I don’t disagree with your comment.

By: Purplecat

Purplecat — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:13:00 +0000

These rules would make sense if they were trying to be a reliable and verifiable source of original information, but of course that’s not what Sky News actually is. They’re really more like aggregators, republishing press releases, wire stories and canned interviews to drive up clicks/viewers to make more money from advertising; all while adding as much bias as they can sneak past the UK regulators.

By: Christian Buggedei

Christian Buggedei — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:33:00 +0000

what skeletoncityrepeater said. Also, this apparently only applies to the “official” twitter accounts – the journalists are apparently free to tweet to their hearts delight from their personal ones.

By: skeletoncityrepeater

skeletoncityrepeater — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:03:00 +0000

Most of the guidelines seem reasonable, except perhaps the ones about not tweeting something new. A rule against retweeting something seen only on Twitter seems like a good way to maintain ‘journalistic integrity’. Is the intent of this rubric to maintain integrity, or to clamp down on reporters’ freedom? I hope the former is true. Retweeting is not journalism, in my opinion. The guidelines do seem too broad, though, erring toward the conservative.