Careless Tweets cost lives?
The press watchdog has decided that all material posted on Twitter can be published by the media and should be considered public.
While this might seem obvious to most people, as the aim of Twitter is to share your thoughts with a potentially infinite audience, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has had to wade in to deal with an increasing number of Twitter-related problems.
The body's decision is the result of a complaint brought by an official at Transport for London who argued that her tweets, which were published in newspapers, constituted an invasion of privacy, the BBC reported.
Sarah Baskerville reportedly complained to the PCC after her Tweets, which made remarks about her being hungover at work, appeared in articles in the Daily Mail and The Independent on Sunday.
Baskerville apparently claimed that the information was private and only intended for her 700 Twitter followers. She also said she had made it very clear on the micro blogging site, that the views expressed were completely her own and not representative of Transport for London's official line.
Here account says: "Scottish & Sober-ish Civil Servant. This is my personal account, personal views. Nothing to do with my employers. What I retweet I may or may not agree with."
She apparently told the PCC that she believed she could have a ‘reasonable expectation' of privacy and that the newspapers' reporting of her tweets was misleading.
However, the PCC reportedly responded that Baskerville's audience was potentially far wider than her followers (which seem to have incidentally grown considerably) as each tweet could be re-tweeted.
It also backed the newspapers' argument that Twitter is accessible to the public and Baskerville had taken no steps to tighten her security settings restricting access to her tweets, or to be anonymous.
Consequently, the PCC ruled that the newspapers' articles did not constitute a breach of privacy and the investigation has set a precedent of complaints to come.
"This is an important ruling by the Commission," PCC director Stephen Abell, told Auntie.
"As more and more people make use of such social media to publish material related to their lives, the Commission is increasingly being asked to make judgements about what can legitimately be described as private information. In this case, the Commission decided that republication of material by national newspapers, even though it was originally intended for a smaller audience, did not constitute a privacy intrusion," he added.
