The CBC expects to unveil its new social media guidelines for employees in September 2016. It will replace existing guidelines, adopted in 2007, and revised in 2010. The policy regulates employee conduct both on and off the job, while setting out standards of behaviour for employees using social media.
The CBC’s 2007 employee social media guidelines were released following an Access to Information request by an applicant and later made available at its website. In crafting a new policy CBC must tread a path that both upholds its reputation as Canada’s public broadcaster while also respecting its employees’ rights to freedom of expression. Every CBC employee must read and affirm their compliance with the broadcaster’s social media guidelines.
The news and broadcasting industry places a high premium on safeguarding core values of non-partisanship and lack of bias. The credibility of a reputable news organization rests on objective reporting of events. The CBC’s employee social media policy incorporates elements of its other HR codes, including its Employee Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct, which prohibits the publishing of racist or other discriminatory content. In contrast to its competitors in the private sector, the CBC shoulders the burden of protecting the Charter rights of employees when crafting a social media policy. Employees of the broadcaster are required to uphold the corporation’s core values both on the job and in their off-duty time.
Similar restrictions are in place at Reuters, the Associated Press other broadcasters. An important difference between these competitors and CBC is that as a public news and entertainment provider, CBC must adhere to federal statutes, most notably the Charter of Rights. When creating a social media set of guidelines for employees, the CBC must exercise caution in not infringing on certain provisions of the Canadian Charter.
Professor Wayne MacKay is a constitutional expert who teaches law at Dalhousie University. He said the CBC has a higher standard to meet compared to private sector news organizations when employee codes such as a social media policy are drafted. This is reflected in tighter provisions contained in some CBC competitor codes. For example, Reuters and the Associated Press strongly discourage employees ‘liking’ tweets or comments on other individual’s feeds, especially those that contain news reports or contentious material.
Adapted from a survey of twelve media organizations’ employee social media guidelines as depicted in Table 1, page 208 of Managing Social Media Use: Whither Social Media Guidelines in News Organizations by authors Michaël Opgenhaffen & Leen d’Haenens. The International Journal on Media Management, 17:201–216, 2015.
CBC Media Relations manager Alexandra Fortier explains that the CBC has no restriction on such activity. Ms. Fortier refused to comment when asked if a CBC employee had ever challenged the provisions in the existing corporate guidelines, citing privacy. When asked about the CBC’s less restrictive approach to employees ‘liking’ news-related content published on colleague’s Twitter feeds, Professor MacKay noted that a judge in the U.S. recently ruled that ‘liking’ on social media is a form of freedom of speech.
The CBC expects its employees to make a distinction between their official CBC accounts and personal social media platforms. They are asked not to publish anything that they would not feel comfortable saying in a job-related capacity. Despite its vigilance in safeguarding its reputation as a non-partisan news and entertainment provider to Canadians, the broadcaster must balance these priorities with other considerations – to a greater extent than is the case with others in the industry.
The task at hand is to strike a balance between intersecting interests while meeting its mandate to the Canadian public.
