So the Press Complaints Commission wants to regulate the tweets of newspapers and their reporters. It is a logical step, as the commission continues to track the old print titles in their march into electronic space. The editors’ code of practice it tries to enforce, after all, applies to journalists and does not restrict itself to one mode of delivery.
The people at the commission are smart enough to know the difference, too, between a Twitter feed that is professional and representative and one that is personal, just as 95 per cent of journalists are. It might even also be possible to differentiate between tweets in one feed, though it would certainly be tricky. A journalist tweeting in a personal capacity who released information acquired in the course of his or her work and which was in breach of the code would surely be liable to censure after all.
Where the PCC is beginning to find its own boundaries, as it must know, is in determining who is a journalist now. If you are not employed by an organisation subscribing to its funding body, PressBof — which essentially represents the old dead-tree industry — and if your work is not published by one of those organisations, then (unless I’m mistaken) you are not regulated by the PCC. Meanwhile (again, unless I’m mistaken), if you are a broadcast journalist whose work appears online you answer to a different, statutory regulator.
You don’t need to be a prophet to see that, whatever brands may migrate successfully online over time, their print or TV origins will soon be of no importance. They will compete with other brands, non-brands and individuals in every kind of online format, including tweets, to provide the kind of information we now call journalism, often in addition to other kinds of information. The PCC, however, will surely always be limited to regulating the organisations that fund it, which leaves it with very little potential for online empire-building.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University and tweets at @BrianCathcart
