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BBC Journalists Warned Against Virtue Signaling

Posted on Friday, October 30, 2020 at 4:57 PM

In the news: BBC lays down stringent new rules for its journalists in response to complaints of partisanship.

The BBC has warned its news staff not to post any social media content or participate in any public activism that might hint at their personal points of view. According to Jim Waterson on BBC.com, the rules go even a step further: “The rules reiterate a requirement not to publicly criticise fellow BBC employees and warn that using certain emojis in tweets can be seen as a sign of bias....

The BBC has recently faced criticism from Conservative Party figures and far-right media outlets in response to some BBC staffers’ social media content. “Staff have been told to stop getting into unnecessary arguments online,” Waterson reports, “and warned that building their ‘personal brand’ on social media is secondary to their responsibility as an employee of the BBC.” Waterson does specify, however, that “While many of the rules will apply to all BBC employees, including freelance staff, some of the tougher guidelines apply only to staff in news-related jobs.” Read more here.

Also Notable

Fact-Checking the Election

Similar to the 2016 election, the 2020 election has been riddled with conspiracy theories and disinformation attempts. So what are newsrooms doing to combat the surge of bad information? Fact checkers tell Poynter.org to expect lots of disinformation on social media between now and next week. Cristina Tardáguila of Poynter.org reports: “To try to stop conspiracy theories, be they about the candidates, the pandemic or the electoral process, U.S fact-checkers are preparing “war rooms” for this weekend. Many will be on duty -- throughout Saturday and all of Sunday -- to not only follow closing arguments by Trump and Biden, but also to identify falsehoods before they gain relevance and viralize on social media.” The pressure is on these fact checkers to catch and call out heaps of bad information, but the onus falls on someone else as well: the reader. “Don’t share conspiracy theories,” she cautions. Read more here.

LA Times Staffers Form Latino Caucus

Representation in newsrooms and on magazine mastheads continues to be a developing story in the media industry. Most recently, Latino staffers at the LA Times have formed their own caucus to help the paper better serve its readers. As Evelyn Mateos of EditorandPublisher.com notes, quoting a staff writer at the paper, “while the population of Los Angeles County is almost 50 percent Latino, the newsroom is only 13 percent Latino.” The group wrote a letter to owner Patrick Soon-Shiong expressing its concerns and laying out its mission: “The Latino Caucus was established in July 2020 to call for change. We did so inspired by our Black colleagues, who formed the L.A. Times Guild’s first Black Caucus and pushed open the doors of what is possible.” Read more about the caucus here, and the group’s letter to ownership here.

Covid-19 Hurting News Industry

Newspapers have been hit hard by the current pandemic, report Michael Barthel, Katerina Eva Matsa, and Kirsten Worden of Pew Research Center. In a piece published this week, Barthel, Matsa, and Worden discuss the Q2 numbers and other developments in the news industry. “Among the six publicly traded newspaper companies studied ... advertising revenue fell by a median of 42% year over year,” they write. And the news isn’t much better on the digital side: “Digital ad revenue fell by a median of 32% year over year in the second quarter.” Circulation revenue is down 8 percent as well. Read the full report here.

Washington Post Grows Global Subscriptions

Lifting paywalls on Covid-related content has paid off big for some publications, including the Washington Post. Kayleigh Barber of Digiday.com discusses how WaPo paved the way for success before the pandemic hit: “Taking a regionalized approach to everything from marketing to pricing to bundling helped to keep its international subscriptions business growing when many of the publisher’s counterparts experienced a plateau in reader revenue,” she reports, citing comments by CMO Miki King at the Digiday Publishing Summit. King tells Barber that “since the beginning of the year, the Post’s subscriptions business has grown by over 40% year over year, while its global subscriptions business, in particular, is up over 60% from last year.” Read more here.

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