In an advisory issued to its reporters, TV18 owned news channel CNN-IBN has limited the showcasing of Twitter and Facebook content in on its TV news shows. The channel has said that in all programming, its reporters must avoid shooting personal pages or timelines of individuals and showcase only the homepages of these sites or their logos, without displaying timelines. In addition, it has put into place limitations for integrating twitter comments with news bulletins, especially when there is a big story: - reporters can't pick up random messages from facebook or twitter, and only tweets received as feedback by ibnlive or program specific twitter handles, or comments from the business' pages can be run. - Footage/comments to visually depict response to a specific news event as mentioned above cannot be archived or used as file footage. - Celebrity comments, official twitter comments and known personalities are allowed, depending on the news, but effort needs to be made to establish that accounts are genuine: check if the account has a verified sign. This advisory is interesting, particularly in light of the current Internet blocks being instituted by the government of India. Has the mainstream media has begun censoring itself? * A copy of the advisory below. Important Advisory: Following is a set of guidelines on using social media content on CNN IBN. These apply to all news bulletins, special shows, programming, debate shows etc. This needs to be followed in all circumstances. 01. While using footage to denote social networking…
