The Press Complaints Commission is considering whether the Twitter feeds of newspapers and their journalists should be brought under its regulatory scrutiny.
At present, a complainant has no way of requesting the PCC investigate if it believes an inaccurate statement was tweeted by a paper or one of its journalists, something the commission wants to address, according to a report in The Guardian.
The PCC, headed by forrmer Advertising Association chief Baroness Buscombe (pictured), is looking for a way to differentiate between a journalist’s personal and professional tweets. It wants each paper to develop their own Twitter policy which will clearly define which accounts are part of its editorial output and which are not, the report continued.
The new rules could be in place by the end of the year.
Twitter posts are already subject to libel laws and legal action, and along with Facebook are now covered by the British code of advertising practice, policed by the Advertising Standards Authority.
The regulator expanded its remit from March 1, to probe all claims made by companies on websites and social networks, not just paid-for ads.
Related stories:
ASA probes Facebook and Twitter
