As my semester as editor-in-chief comes to an end, I want to share the work we have done to revise our policies regarding social media coverage. Our formal policy can be found on our website, while we have more guidelines in internal documents about how to cover breaking news events. 

These policy changes have come from our continued work to learn from our coverage on the arrests of 13 protesters last October, when we shared video footage from the scene. After posting, community members raised concerns that the videos showed the faces of those arrested. In response, we chose to take the videos down.

After discussing with our editorial team, we uploaded a revised version using clips that did not show identifiable faces. We also published a transparency statement explaining our decision and reaffirming our commitment to rethinking how we cover protests.

As one of those responsible for the original video and the current EIC, I have dedicated this semester to promoting healing, reevaluating, and laying the groundwork for future editors. We’ve already revealed some of this work to our readers and community in the form of our recent focus group. But throughout the semester, a longer process of reevaluating the use of our social media has gone on behind the scenes. 

In our focus group, the impact of social media was discussed in detail. We have seen this in our instagram analytics, as it has become our most influential platform as a newsroom, and has become the primary place people are finding our news. The policies and guidelines we follow as a newspaper are more important than ever. 

To make these policies, we have held group conversations with our entire masthead, and several more with our news and managing editing teams. The mastheads of both semesters this year have had a say in the policies and guidelines we now have in place. 

Within the first couple weeks of the spring semester, The Beacon introduced — and has consistently tested — a formal policy to ensure that social media coverage of protests and breaking news is accurate, ethical, and minimizes harm to students of the Emerson community. Any breaking news post must be approved by at least three senior editors who were not involved in reporting, including the editor-in-chief, multimedia managing editors, and another qualified editor. 

A designated breaking news review committee comprised of senior editorial staff will operate under this approval process to review posts for accuracy, ethics, and potential harm before publication. For each event, the editors are chosen for this review committee based on non-involvement in reporting, sectional relevance, and availability. In an effort to bring more voices into decisions that affect the greater Emerson community, the standing pool of eligible reviewers includes the editor-in-chief, managing editors, news editors, and projects editors. Reporters and correspondents gather content but are not responsible for final posting decisions.

Our internal guidelines, which remain flexible for each event we cover, encourage reporters to consider the context of an event and let that inform their reporting. As student journalists, it is hard to strike the perfect balance of reporting on the events important to the community while also reporting for the community. The Beacon may approach an on-campus student protest differently than a national No Kings Day protest on the Common, for instance.

We recognize that this is just the first step in a long process of grounding ourselves in the community, and we thank you all not only for reading, but for remaining engaged and continuing to hold us accountable.