The Associated Press has adopted a social-networking policy for employees, warning them “to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards.”
“It’s a good idea to monitor your profile page to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards; any such material should be deleted. Also, managers should not issue friend requests to subordinates, since that could be awkward for employees. It’s fine if employees want to initiate the friend process with their bosses,” according to the policy.
“The AP’s social-networking policy comes as the media at large begins adopting Facebook and Twitter guidelines during a time of explosive growth in online social media,” wrote David Kravets for Wired.com. “The News Media Guild, representing about 1,000 AP journalists, says the AP’s policy is perhaps the most restrictive the union has seen.”
“I am unaware of anything else like that,” News Media Guild President Tony Winton told Wired. “Parts of the policy seem to be snuffing out peoples’ First Amendment rights of expression by a company that wraps itself in the First Amendment.”
The news organization is concerned about what employees’ put on their social networking feed/pages because “we all have a stake in upholding the AP’s reputation for fairness and impartiality, which has been one of our chief assets for more than 160 years.”
“So many people were asking what our policy was, we wanted to lay out the top-level view,” Kristin Gazlay, AP’s managing editor/financial news and global training, told Editor and Publisher.
She distributed the policy to employees last week.
“It has become a huge part of how people gather information and disseminate information,” Gazlay said. ”There is no intent on being Big Brother, no plans to scour people’s pages looking for things.”
“These guidelines do not break new ground – they are consistent with the rest of our Statement of News Values and Principles. They just take into account the new realities of the social-networking world and answer questions that many AP employees have asked,” according to the policy.
