Online Journalism News

BBC director-general on social media use: 'You can't take BBC cloak off at will'

There is no 'Chinese Wall' between personal opinion and what appears on the BBC, the corporation's director-general Mark Thompson told Journalism.co.uk after giving his memorial lecture at the Charles Wheeler Award presentation on Wednesday evening.

BBC journalists who are 'of interest to the public at large, because of the name and the title they've got' have to consider their use of social media carefully, he said.

"In the same way we're very careful about the boundaries for our news and affairs correspondents writing columns in newspapers. There isn't really a Chinese Wall you can draw between personal opinion and what appears on the BBC - the same thing with the blogs and the tweets.

"What you can't do easily is take off the cloak of the BBC and put it back on at will."

The BBC's current guidelines on personal use of social media and third party sites can be found here, at this link: 'If a blog makes it clear that the author works for the BBC, it should include a simple and visible disclaimer such as these are my personal views and not those of the BBC,' the rules state.

Journalism.co.uk asked Thompson whether he would be loosening or tightening social media policy, in light of recent online discussion about the BBC's use of the social network site, Twitter.

As reported by Journalism.co.uk yesterday, the BBC moderates and 'double-checks' tweets from accounts used in a 'professional capacity'.

"[In general] when a BBC journalist says something and it's broadcast, it's essentially the BBC broadcasting it," Thompson said, adding that social media profiles 'are not regulated services'.

Nonetheless, the corporation has 'still got to think very hard about the reputation of the BBC and its journalism even if it's not in the context of a BBC service', he said.

"Overall, we're looking hard at social media - both in terms of guidelines and controls, but equally the opportunities because we can see there are so many people who are interested in consuming social media in a shared social space: debating it, sharing and so forth," he said.

"Getting a total approach to social media right is very important to us now."

When is a blog not a blog?
"If you look very closely at what we do: they're sometimes called blogs. Robert Peston on the web and [his] web reports, those are balanced pieces of journalism," added Thompson.

"It may be in the form of a blog but it's carefully balanced - it's checked by a senior editorial manager, it's fact-checked. It's a piece of essentially broadcast journalism."

In his memorial lecture Thompson said: "We know no matter what technological advances there are, no matter how big the work of blogging, tweeting, interacting becomes, what the public around the world expects more than anything, is great, professional journalism."

Answering a question from the audience about BBC impartiality, Thompson said that censorship of BBC journalists was sometimes over-exaggerated. BBC journalists often, for example, say on air:  'I would never be allowed to say this', he claimed.

'Impartiality is not about a lack of human engagement'; it is about a 'lack of party divides', and fair and open reporting, he said.

More coverage of Journalism in Crisis 2009 to follow from Journalism.co.uk. @journalism_live covered the event on Twitter. A livestream was available at this link.

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events | university of westminster | journalism in crisis 2009 | british journalism review | jic09 |

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