The Associated Press
The Associated Press updated its social media guidelines today, adding sections about correcting erroneous tweets and deleting tweets. The guidelines, which have been updated three times in the past year, say that when correcting erroneous tweets, AP staffers should tweet that they made a mistake and explain what was wrong. The guidelines also advise staffers to seek advice before deleting tweets that may have been retweeted or posted elsewhere.
Some journalists criticized the AP last fall after it advised staffers not to write retweets in a way that would make it seem as though they were expressing personal opinions. Those guidelines instructed staff to put “RT” at the beginning of a retweet and to include a phrase indicating that the journalist is passing on someone else’s opinion. The new guidelines tell journalists to put the RT between their explanation and the tweet that they’re passing along, which is standard convention on Twitter. “These cautions apply even if you say on your Twitter profile that retweets do not constitute endorsements,” the guidelines state.
