When journalists become lil' Twittering birds

It was bound to happen eventually. Love it or hate it, the entire ZDNet team is now on Twitter.

We created a general account over a year ago that we use to push out news headlines, and anyone who's following us will be updated once our stories are published. So, our tweets were pretty straightforward, carrying mainly headlines and URLs pointing back to the original articles.

We then started to include on-site tweets, through which we would highlight issues discussed at press conferences and industry events from location, as they're taking place.

Even then, our tweets remained free from opinions and statements that couldn't be substantiated by valid sources.

As journalists, our primary responsibility is to produce news articles that reflect key developments in the industry accurately and impartially. Our opinions have no part to play in news stories, and commentaries that do carry our personal views are clearly demarcated so readers know to treat these differently.

But, as Web 2.0 and social networks began to emerge and gain more prominence worldwide, I had to reconsider our approach of Twitter and reassess how else we should be using the platform.

I've had apprehension about integrating the use of social networks and Web 2.0 tools in our work because it increases the likelihood that our opinions will be mistaken as news facts.

For instance, if I updated my Facebook status with a statement expressing my frustration over how Microsoft Word often crashes, affecting my ability to meet work deadlines, would the software vendor be able to trust me to remain objective when I interview a company executive about the launch of the next version of Office?

Thanks to social networks, it's too easy and quick for anyone to broadcast their personal preferences, likes and dislikes, opinions and observations about their daily life.

For journalists, that can introduce implications about their credibility and ability to separate their personal beliefs from their treatment of news.

While such doubt had always existed--journalists are after all human beings with emotions--company executives wouldn't typically know what our personal opinions were unless they took the time and sat down with us for a 1-1 chat.

This changed with Facebook, Twitter and other Web 2.0 platforms. It's now too easy to access our personal thoughts anytime, anywhere, without meeting us first.

But, I knew we would eventually have to expand our use of Twitter beyond simply pushing news headlines. It would provide a great way for readers to get to know the faces behind the bylines, and help build anticipation for upcoming media coverage.

So everyone in my team now has his/her own individual Twitter account, which we use to highlight media interviews and events they've attended or are attending.

I've been mulling over the policies and guidelines I'll need to establish with my team's extended use of Twitter, but find myself hitting several brick walls.

If I disallowed our tweets from carrying personal opinions, our Twitter accounts would then be no different from the general ZDNet Asia account. But if the team had a free rein on what they can tweet about, that could potentially result in defamatory remarks or a worst-case scenario, lawsuits.

There's also a risk that information under embargo will be unintentionally leaked. Press invites sometimes contain information about upcoming company announcements or product launches that cannot be published before the event.

Such invites typically carry a notification to alert us that details highlighted in the invite cannot be published. But, there's always a chance that someone in my team would forget to take note of the embargo and tweet about it.

No one's perfect, and I can expect such mistakes to happen along the way, especially when we thrive in a fast-paced media environment that leaves little time for us to mull over things.

But, oversights like these can negatively impact our credibility as journalists and may give sources reasons to think twice before giving us exclusive information.

I'm still trying to come up with a set of guidelines that I think will work best for our venture into Twitter. For now, my team knows to moderate their comments and be guided along the lines of staying litigation-free.

So, do check out our accounts! I've listed them below, along with the names of my writers and their corresponding beats.

Kevin Kwang @ http://twitter.com/KevinZDNetAsia covers hardware and tech jobs.

Victoria Ho @ http://twitter.com/viczdnetasia covers mobile communications and open source.

Vivian Yeo @ http://twitter.com/VivianZDNetAsia covers security.

Yun Qing @ http://twitter.com/YQLiauZDNetAsia covers software and Internet.

We still push our latest news headlines @ http://twitter.com/zdnetasia so do check it out too.

Lastly, you can find me at http://twitter.com/EileenZDNetAsia.