Tweeting the News
I’m betting you’ve never heard of Neal Mann, but for a while on Tuesday this young producer at Sky News became a cause celebre, on Twitter at least. Under the hashtag #savefieldproducer he became a trending topic, one of the most-discussed subjects on the social networking service.
The reason was the leaking of, what appeared to be, a very restrictive new social media policy at Sky. According to the Guardian, the policy included a ban on retweeting stories from rival news organisations or people on Twitter, and staff will now be instructed to stick to their own beat, only tweeting about stories to which they have been assigned – or retweeting other Sky journalists. What’s more, Sky’s newsdesk, not social media, should be the first port of call for any of its journalists with a breaking story.
Looks like Sky appreciate the power of social media. Can they control it?
See full story from the BBC here
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