Punching Down

According to NY Magazine, “A high importance e-mail went out to Associated Press employees early Wednesday morning to remind them of Twitter rules in the wake of staff arrests at yesterday’s local protests.” 

As any of us who have worked, like, anywhere knows, “high-importance” emails rarely go out to staff to say “GREAT JOB GUYS!” The issue, in this case, says NYMag: AP’s social media guidelines state:

Don’t break news that we haven’t published, no matter the format.

If you have a piece of information, a photo or a video that is compelling, exclusive and/or urgent enough to be considered breaking news, you should file it to the wire, and photo and video points before you consider putting it out on social media. And in those cases in which you capture exclusive content, you should consult with a supervisor about how to share it on your personal social media account.  

But according to NYMag, the email said, in part “We have had staff tweet – BEFORE THE MATERIAL WAS ON THE WIRE – that staff were arrested.”  (I didn’t add the all caps).

I (this is Eve, BTW.  Damn you Tumblr, and your weird rules on what blogs can have multiple contributors!) can understand the business concerns behind this rule — tweeting breaking news gives your competition the opportunity to get a story out before you do.  

But I can also see the main tenets of journalism argument here — if you choose this (sometimes thankless) line of work because you want to get news and information out to the people, it’s hard to then comply with a rule saying “yeah, but, don’t.  Not yet.”

Your thoughts, as always, are welcomed. You can share your thoughts by email (punchingdown@gmail.com) or call and leave us a message at (415) 878-6240 (that’s 415-8PUNCH0).

Update: Or maybe we were all missing the point.