Reuters' Social Media Policy and Twitter

Reuters advises journalists not to break stories on Twitter in their new social media policy that was released Wednesday. Reuters wants news to be broken on the wire first.

This is only one of the stipulations of Reuters' social media policy. It is also suggested that journalists seek approval from managers to use Twitter for professional purposes and having a peer double-check tweets before posting . Reuters also encourages journalists to have two separate Twitter accounts, one for private use and one for professional.

Reuters claims that this a way to keep a journalists personal biased out of the news, but is it really? Maybe it is more the fact that if more news is tweeted first and then published officially later, less people will go to Reuters' Web site to read the whole story. In this day and age, losing readers to Twitter is something that no news organizations cannot afford to do.

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Whose Rights are Being Protected?

You could be living next door to a rapist, and never even know. A man from New Jersey allegedly raped his five daughters, but the Associated Press is not revealing his name. Why is his identity being protected? He is not the victim.

The New York Daily News and the New Jersey Star-Ledger did not protect this perpetrator, however. They chose to reveal the accused rapist's identity. The Associated Press wants to protect the identity of the children. By not revealing his name, they are protecting a man facing criminal sexual contact, sexual assault, and child endangerment charges.

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