Facebook, Twitter and the Trust Principles: a guide

These are the guidelines:

• If Reuters journalists want to use Twitter or social media as part of their professional role they should seek the permission of their manager.
• If Reuters journalists use Twitter professionally they should use the word “Reuters” in the name of their streams or somewhere else on the page.
• The Trust Principles apply to Twitter and social media - journalists should do nothing that compromises them.
• Microblogging and use of social media tend to blur the distinction between professional and personal lives: When using Twitter or social media in a professional capacity Reuters journalists should aim to be personable but not to include irrelevant material about their personal lives.

The Trust Principles were created in the midst of World War II with the express purpose of preserving Reuters’ independence, integrity and freedom from bias. When Reuters merged with Thomson in April 2008 they were adopted by the combined company.

Dean Wright, global editor, ethics, innovation and news standards, pondering the question “Are we too connected?” says that in recent days and weeks he’s been wondering whether our mobile phones, Blackberries, text messaging and constant access to e-mail and social media have brought us too close together for our own good.

“Or maybe the quality of our connected life is only as good as the information we share.”

Wright wonders whether this “me, me, me” quality of Facebook and Twitter is just an early evolutionary stage of something smarter and more useful. “There are some encouraging signs - and that’s a good thing, because we’re becoming ever more connected,” he says.

How connected are we?

“At Reuters, we’re using Reuters Messenger to build chat rooms in which our journalists can expand their conversation with the marketplace through informal, dynamic interactions with a group of engaged financial news clients on our terminals.

“We’re also using Twitter in some intriguing ways:

• “Specialist journalists use it to share articles and build up a following.
• “Online editorial staff and bloggers use Twitter to distribute news and solicit reader comment.
• “Journalists are using Twitter during live events like the World Economic Forum at Davos (editor-in-chief David Schlesinger used it to break news there earlier this year) and to solicit questions for newsmaker interviews.

“There are huge implications for those of us in the news media as we try to reach an increasingly fragmented and distracted audience awash in information, some of it wanted and much of it not.

“And journalists who work and live in the digital world (and that’s just about all of us now) will find that there is little or no difference between our professional and private personae in the wide-open world of social media.”

In an e-mail to editorial staff, Schlesinger said “whether we like it or not, our online identities are inextricably linked with our workplace identities…Things we do online could very easily taint our journalistic activity. If one of us self-identifies as ‘very liberal’ politically, it may well be the truth, but would advertising it simply feed the myth that journalists in general have a liberal bias?”

“The easiest rule,” Schlesinger cautioned, “is to stop, think and imagine: How would you feel and how would you react if someone made your Facebook page or blog or online comment a story? Could you defend your objectivity? Could Reuters defend having you on the beat you’re on? Could your reputation, and ours, survive someone making an issue of it?”

Wright added: “I’m sure neither Schlesinger nor I have had the last word on the relationship of journalism and social media, nor on whether we’re all too connected. What we need to pay attention to is the quality of those connections.” ■