NEW SURVEY SAYS ROGUE SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS BY EMPLOYEES DAMAGE PUBLIC TRUST • WNYC-FM SHINES IN OCTOBER PPM RATINGS

As Americans vote today, it is important to remember that truth, honesty and the “greater good” still matter. 

The impact of the nation’s “disrupter in chief” has caused many businesses and organizations to establish, or re-think, social media guidelines for employees.

The topic was front-and-center at the PRRO Super-Regional Meeting held in late October in Atlanta. 

At the panel session Station Culture Matters: Let's Put Journalism First, four members of the Culture of Journalism (COJ) initiative brought new information to meeting attendees. 

According to the presenters, stations need to establish clear guidelines at their shops.

In September, COJ conducted at survey of social media practices at 160 NPR News/Talk stations. Seventy-six stations responded. The key findings were:

• Most of the stations (an exact number was not provided) did not have social media guidelines for employees.

• At the stations that do have guidelines, 55% said staff members violated the guidelines “once or twice” in the past year.  13% reported that staff members had “three or more” violations of the guidelines.

• Also at the stations that do have guidelines, 73% said they had at least one “problematic post,” 55% reported they had asked a staff member to modify or delete a social media post and 9% said improper social media activities lead to suspensions or termination of staff members.

NPR News/Talk stations promise to air truthful, fact based news reporting. But even an obscure social media post by an employee or volunteer may damage this trust. Once trust is damaged, it may be difficult to get it back.

The findings are also available in a webinar sponsored by PRNDI [link].

PRNDI will be coordinating more webinars surrounding issues surfacing from survey data.  Also, a complete report of the survey data will be released in the coming months.

MORE REASONS WHY SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDELINES ARE IMPORTANT

A recent post on the blog SocialMedia.biz [link] demonstrates the perceived risk to a company from “rogue” social media post. According to an unpublished survey of American business, 75% feared damage to their brand integrity. The chart on the right shows other risk factors.

Other perceived risks for public media include data security, defamation and the loss of intellectual property.

NIELSEN AUDIO PPM RATINGS: NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES & DC

Last week Nielsen rolled out the results of the October 2018 PPM ratings. In New York, WNYC-FM hit a new recording high: An AQH Share of 3.6%. 

All-news commercial station WINS-AM still leads in NYC with a 4.4% AQH Share. 

WNYC-FM now leads All-news WCBS-AM by almost a fill point. Commercial All-talk WOR-FM trails WNYC-FM in both AQH Share and Estimated Weekly listeners.

Triple A WFUV continues to gain Weekly Listeners and AQH Share. Note that Spark News is now combining estimates of over-the-air listening with and with listening to streaming audio.

In Los Angeles, KPCC is now closing in on commercial All-news KNX-FM. 

In the October PPM ratings KNX leads by only one-tenth of a point.

Classical music KUSC also saw an increased AQH Share and Estimated Weekly Listeners.

WAMU increased its AQH Share but commercial All-news WTOP increased their AQH Share even more. 

In October 2018 WTOP had a 9.9 AQH Share and an estimated 1,214,500 weekly listeners.