Complicating Twitter And Journalism

The Associated Press's decision to ban its writers from expressing opinions on Twitter asks for trouble—just when traditional media should be adapting to social media

The Associated Press caused a minor furor recently, when the news-wire service updated its social-media policy and forbade its writers from expressing opinions on Twitter, including implied opinions in the process of retweeting posts by others. In the wake of that controversy, Jeff Sonderman at the Poynter Institute has suggested that journalists could use their own Twitter shorthand to prevent anyone from getting the wrong impression when a reporter retweets something.

As I’ve argued before, all we really have to do is admit that journalists of all kinds might have opinions, instead of trying to pretend that they don’t—or trying to force them not to.

According to the Associated Press policy (PDF link), the risk in simply retweeting comments made by others—with no disclaimer or qualifying comment—is that readers might assume that a retweet endorses whatever views have been expressed by the original poster. Many journalists on Twitter have tried to deal with this by adding a line to their Twitter bio that says “retweets are not endorsements.” Apparently this isn’t enough for the wire service.

The AP’s policy states: “Retweets, like tweets, should not be written in a way that looks like you’re expressing a personal opinion on the issues of the day. A retweet with no comment of your own can easily be seen as a sign of approval of what you’re relaying [and] these cautions apply even if you say on your Twitter profile that retweets do not constitute endorsements.”

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