8 February 2012updated 26 Sep 2015 8:46pm

Sky News and anti-social media

The channel's decision to ban retweets by its journalists is a great leap backwards.

Sky News’s bizarre new social media policy hasn’t been well received by anyone, not least its own journalists. The channel has banned its staff from retweeting information from other journalists and Twitter users and from tweeting on stories other than their own.

An email to staff said:

So, to reiterate, don’t tweet when it is not a story to which you have been assigned or a beat which you work.

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Where a story has been Tweeted by a Sky News journalist who is assigned to the story it is fine, desirable in fact, that it is retweeted by other Sky News staff.

Do not retweet information posted by other journalists or people on Twitter. Such information could be wrong and has not been through the Sky News editorial process.

The stated reason for the policy is “to ensure that our journalism is joined up across platforms, there is sufficient editorial control of stories reported by Sky News journalists and that the news desks remain the central hub for information going out on all our stories.” But its hard to see a blanket ban as anything but a retrograde step that runs counter to the entire ethos of social media. A no-retweet policy violates the golden rule of the web: link and be linked. Far better to trust your journalists and to quietly discipline them on those occasions that they do slip up.

Even one Rupert Murdoch, who has posted links to New York Times articles in the past, has distanced himself from the move.

I have nothing to do with Sky News.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) February 8, 2012

Sky’s decision also again raises the question of who owns a Twitter account: the journalist or the organisation? The channel’s digital news editor Neal Mann, a prolific tweeter, already appears to have violated the ban by retweeting a Press Gazette story on the Nightjack case.

But to its loss, the channel seems unlikely to think again. Sky, an organisation with a deserved reputation for digital innovation, has taken a great leap backwards.