David Preiser must be choking on his hash browns as he reads this from the BBC:
A big #YearOnTwitter for @BBCBreaking
Across our television, radio and digital services we’ve delivered to huge audiences at regional, national and international level. Social media is an increasingly important part of our news output. In terms of breaking news that means @BBCBreaking and its eight million followers.
So what’s the best way to capture these moments if you’re broadcasting to an audience of millions of followers on Twitter?
@BBCBreaking was neither the first to announce the news of Nelson Mandela’s death, nor had anything different to say than our competitors. So why did our tweet generate 78,000 retweets, several thousand more than any other news organisation?
No one can claim to know for sure, but we think the simple brevity of the tweet together with the photograph, could well have made it more shareable.
It’s safe to say that @BBCBreaking has had a very good year. Follower numbers have increased from 4.5 million to more than 8 million in the space of 12 months. It has consistently led Newswhip’s “top publisher” chart on Twitter (ranked by tweets and retweets), and has recently been showcased by Twitter as one of the news accounts of 2013.
There are many theories on what makes news travel farthest on social media. Accuracy and timeliness is clearly important but arguably, in a world where many notable figures have been killed off prematurely on social media, and where breaking news situations can be beset by spurious or false claims, nothing is more important than trust.
Judging by many of the BBC Tweets logged by David and others on this site ‘trust’ is possibly the last thing you might associate with many BBC journo’s Tweets.
Told you so. They’ve been working on this for a few years now. Unfortunately – and this is actually what made me spit up my tea (there’s a reason I have one of those vinyl keyboard covers) – is that this graph isn’t even completely accurate, either. The reality is much worse than this.
The graph doesn’t include all the individual Beeboid accounts. That surely must be included in an accounting. Why? Because anyone who checks those will see the lie of their false distinction between personal and official accounts. The majority of those who have the “Views my own” get-out-of-bias-free card promote BBC output (their own and others) via their “personal” Twitter accounts. Plenty of producers use their “personal” accounts to reach out openly to people for a story, asking them to get in touch. Big-name presenters even use their “personal” accounts to promote their shows and to interact with their audience.
Anyone who hasn’t checked it out yet is encouraged to click through to the “In Their Own Tweets” tab at the top. Please read the mission statement before going through the tweets. Show it to your friends, family, and acquaintances next time somebody claims there’s no groupthink or that the BBC is pro-Coalition or whatever.
News Director James Harding has recently announced it’s only going to get worse.
PS: The tweets list is mostly due to the hard work and eternal vigilance of DB. I’m merely the curator.
It is certainly proving hard to make the distinction between when the BBC claims ‘we’ as an all inclusive good thing, and all those individual ‘views my own’ accounts of BBC staff that so often need to be deleted or blocked.
Some BBC employees (a couple of cameramen and other people who do the honest behind-the-scenes, technical work that makes the magic happen) use Twitter responsible. Much of it is the same as everyone else: sports, I’m stuck on the train, tired after a long day, kids, etc., and personal opinion is there but nothing political or vicious. For some reason none of them comes across as juvenile or arrogant. I’ve even seen tweets where they mention their work. But instead of the kind of sneering and belittling the Beeboids on our list engage in, they do it in the context of how privileged they feel to have the kind of job that gave them the opportunity to film such a cool story. Their pride and enthusiasm comes from doing quality work for the public instead of partying and making Middle England choke on their cornflakes.
The better-paid and more elite caste (on-air talent, producers, program editors, College of Journalism mavens) would do well to follow their example. Except they’re the elite. They’re the ones who feel invincible and only get annoyed rather than open their minds when faced with criticism or an alternative point of view (viz Evan Davis to DB the other day). They’re the ones who spout venom at ideological opponents. They’re the reason the BBC has the official policy requiring disclaimers, and the remit not to do anything which makes the BBC look like it’s filled with half-baked university students in a special-interest club.
And when they get caught, they get petulant and confused, unable to understand why all of a sudden their line manager says they can’t do what they thought they were allowed to do the whole time. If they all followed the example of the people around them, the ones who do the uncelebrated work, we wouldn’t have the list. If the BBC management actually gave a damn and truly wanted to run a tight ship instead of having a CYA compliance regime and bosses who try to enforce some arbitrary, emotion-based gesture towards balance and impartiality, the whole thing would be scrapped and started from scratch. They don’t, though. It’s much easier to ask forgiveness than to get it right in the first place.
“Too many tweets might make a twat.”
sweet comment thanks for sharing this.