Yesterday we told you about the cnet reports that ESPN is putting the social media lid on its employees.
For ESPN, the social-networking revolution will not be televised–or tweeted, blogged, or Facebooked. Not for now, at least, and not without ESPN’s approval.
The sports network has apparently banned its workforce from posting any sports-related content on social-networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook without its permission. The news first came to light Tuesday when Ric Bucher, an NBA analysts for ESPN, tweeted that he had just received an network memo regarding tweeting:
The hammer just came down, tweeps: ESPN memo prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN. Kinda figured with was coming. Not sure what this means but
Ok, a couple of things here. I am a big sports fan. Probably too much so. While I don’t really care about the social media musings of ESPN ‘personalities’ apparently many do as indicated by the 18,000 followers that Bucher has amassed (I know, I know most of it is junk but …). Unless there are national security implications around some sports what can happen here? Can someone slander the network? If they do you have another recourse called firing them. This may actually help a company like ESPN weed out the nit wits on their staff. Will they ‘break’ a story that turns out to be wrong? I say so what but I suppose there needs to be journalistic integrity even in something as ultimately unimportant as sports.
ESPN is not alone in its approach. Some NFL teams are starting to crack down on usage of the medium as well Comments
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