Watch what you eat, watch what you tweet

By Addison Walton

In a recent post in the journalism/technology blog “10,000 Words,” Elena Zak highlights eight media members who were either fired or reprimanded by their companies for unacceptable tweets. What’s interesting about this piece is how it starts off. The first sentence says “When it comes to Twitter, journalists tread a thin line. While a lot of news organizations strongly suggest their reporters sign up for an account and gain followers, many don’t have a written social media policy.” (Read part 2 of Zak’s report here)

Herein lies the first problem with social media and many other journalism outlets today. In only one of the cases about which Zak writes is there a breach of a company’s social-media policy. The first step to rectify this growing trend of reporters crossing the thin line needs to be implementation of a social-media policy. (Of course, using common sense would help, but let’s put that aside.) With more news filtering through Twitter, news organizations need to have a clear set of guidelines if they are going to ask their reporters to open accounts and use them to report.