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Censorship or impartiality, should journalists be prohibited from commenting on Twitter?

2020-09-04T22:18:11.896Z


Several specialists analyze the issue after the new director general of the BBC alerted reporters that public opinion is not compatible with their work


“In the coming weeks we will present new recommendations to maintain impartiality.

There will be new norms regarding social networks, and they will be rigorously enforced ”.

In the midst of an open war with the conservative government of Boris Johnson, which questions the BBC's bias on key issues such as Brexit or the management of the pandemic and threatens to drown its income, new director of British public radio, Tim Davie in his speech he has set impartiality as a great value to be recovered at home.

In a harangue to employees delivered on Thursday, he warned that the path begins by keeping journalists' opinions hidden. "If you want to be an opinion columnist or do partisan campaigning on social media, it is a valid option, but you should not be working in the BBC, ”he said.

In this way, the BBC positions itself on one side of the growing dilemma of journalism today: can a reporter use social networks like any other citizen, or does disseminating their opinions betray journalistic distance?

Is it possible to do journalism without participating in the digital conversation?

In reality, what British public broadcaster does is position itself more severely on the side in which it has been for years.

The organization asks its journalists to refrain from commenting on networks: several employees have reminded EL PAÍS to receive that indication in the courses with which new signings are received.

The novelty is in a word.

The style guide warns that "employees who disclose their opinions may be banned from the areas in which they work."

Davie's tone suggests that the "can" is at risk of disappearing and becoming a "van."

“The BBC is going in exactly the opposite direction.

Journalists need to be more human, less institutional.

One of the reasons why the public does not trust us is that we have separated ourselves from them, we have placed ourselves above the people we serve, "defends journalist and media analyst Jeff Jarvis.

“In journalism we must learn to listen and social networks are a way of doing it and participating in conversations with the public that allow us to understand, sympathize, collect and report the needs and desires of the people.

Isolating ourselves from social media is isolating ourselves from voices that were for too long ignored in the mass media.

It was the social media, and not the mass media, that gave voice to Black Lives Matter, Me Too and the outraged ”.

Eduardo Suárez, journalist and communication director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, shares that idea: “They are not the eighties.

Journalists do our work in public and the reader perceives us as people and not as automatons.

We respond to those who mention an error to us and we correct it.

That interaction has made journalism better. "

But he clarifies: “There are degrees also in opinion.

It is not the same to express an opinion on ideas or generic issues than to defend any policy or message of a single party as some political journalists do in Spain ”.

While the move is not short of critics, the BBC is not alone.

The New York Times

and

The Washington Post

, two of the leading newspapers in the United States, also ask their journalists not to publish their opinions.

Like the Buzzfeed website and the Associated Press (AP) and France Presse agencies (unless the journalist opens a parallel account to the professional).

The larger the institution, the more ballots it has to try to control the image that its employees project of it.

The argument is that a good part of the people who follow journalists on social networks do so through the headline where they work: they follow the media, not the journalist.

Difficult compliance

Except for the AP, which dates from 2011, these rules are relatively recent.

However, there have already been scenes that reveal how difficult it is to fulfill them.

Two recent

Post

events

:

Reporter Wesley Lowry received a reprimand a year ago for tweeting non-political views (such as calling attendees a Washington book launch "decadent aristocrats").

If he continued like this, they told him, he could lose his job.

Months later, his partner, Felicia Gomez, was suspended from her post for remembering on Twitter the accusations of sexual abuse against Kobe Bryant shortly after it was learned that the basketball player had died in an accident.

The newsroom then issued a letter protesting the decision and Gomez returned to work.

(By contrast, in

The New York Times,

the newspaper's media correspondent, Ben Smith, admitted in a column that these infractions are settled “with passive-aggressive e-mail from a section chief and little follow-up”).

Are we facing an inescapable demand from the newsrooms of the future all over the world?

Or one last tantrum before the stars of the networks occupy a fundamental niche in the press?

"I think the balance of power between the media and the journalist is changing in favor of the journalist," says Suárez.

"The media must learn to be talent management platforms and to relax the rules of style to accommodate new journalists, reach new audiences."

There are factors of their own that lead the BBC to this decision: the 2020 Digital News Report - published by the Reuters Institute of the University of Oxford - indicates that the United Kingdom is the country that least tolerates mixing information with opinion: only one 11% of British people want an article to come with an analysis even if they agree with it (in Spain that figure jumps to 34%).

The impartiality of the BBC has taken on a special urgency, moreover, since the victory of Boris Johnson. "The BBC, probably and like many others, is intimidated by the right," says Jarvis.

“It is who is in power in the UK and who is threatening to cut off its funding.

I hope I do not see another medium that covers its ears and distances journalists from the public they serve. "

A case light years from Germany and France

The case of the BBC, as a public company, is unique in Europe.

In Germany, journalists working for the two public broadcasters, ARD and ZDF, can not only use Twitter to express their comments, but are also covered by the guidelines of the two networks.

Journalists can report critically on the government, the cabinet, political and economic scandals and historical events, for example about the Nazi era and are not controlled by the government at all.

The German Interstate Broadcasting Treaty establishes that the “mission of the public broadcasting companies”, which is in conformity with the constitution, is “to act as a means and factor in the process of free formation of public and individual opinion” and, therefore Therefore, “satisfy the democratic, social and cultural needs of society”,

Enrique Müller reports from Berlin.

In France, the most general rule is that, if a journalist wants to express his or her own opinions, a new Twitter account must be opened in which no mention is made of their connection to a medium.

This is the case of the Agence France Presse according to its

Statutes of good editorial and deontological practices.

Similarly, the statutes for international public television and radio channels, such as Radio France International (RFI) or France24, indicate that “if a journalist wishes to demonstrate in a private context on a social network, he must open a personal account, explicitly separated from your professional account ”.

In addition, it recommends "strongly, to avoid any confusion, adding the mention 'the opinions expressed do not reflect the position of France 24, RFI, MCD' or a similar formula", Silvia Ayuso reports.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-09-04

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