★★★★★ 0/5

ABC closing Twitter accounts for Insiders, News Breakfast.

Two ABC shows back out of social media engagement on Twitter, but will maintain a presence on Facebook.

6
Leave a comment

Twitter accounts for News Breakfast, Insiders and ABC Politics are set to close.

Despite having over 134,000 followers for News Breakfast, and 146,000 for Insiders, both will be shut by Monday. ABC Politics has over 45,000.

ABC was considered a pioneer of combining Twitter with broadcasting when Q+A began embedding tweets on screen as part of audience engagement.

Since then some elements of social media have become brutal and more extreme, including bullying attacks on presenters such as Lisa Millar, Stan Grant, David Speers, Leigh Sales and more. But Facebook accounts will continue, which allows for closing of comments when they are not staff monitored.

An ABC spokesperson tod TV Tonight, the broadcaster was prioritising resources where the main audience resides.

“We’re closing some of the ABC News program accounts and consolidating our activity in our main Twitter account, @abcnews, which has by far the most activity, followers and engagement with audiences. This is a better use of resources while still serving audiences on this platform,” they said.

The move has already drawn heated feedback from online critics.

The Weekly with Charlie Pickering also has a ‘protected tweets’ status which means only its 12.7k followers can read directly.

Personal accounts of ABC personalities will continue, although yesterday managing director David Anderson told a Senate Estimates hearing he continued to remind staff to follow the broadcaster’s rules around using social media, flagging it as an ongoing challenge.

6 Responses

  1. So rather than taking our constructive criticism on board & making changes they shut us down. They just can’t handle the truth. And calling them out on their bias & not doing their job is not abuse or bullying.

  2. I thought more people prefer insta, facebook, tiktok, snapchat, nothing….so why would they care about Twitter? Might help them focus more on issues affecting the audience as a whole not a vocal minority

  4. … looks like the ABC’s attitude to Twitter is changing from Mark Scott’s regime … back in 2011 when I went back to Aunty as a radio presenter, I received an email from the state director advising me that he had opened a log-in for me on the ABC TweetDeck (I had no idea what that even was) and instructing me to open my own personal Twitter account and “tweet something every day” … all the news department journos had to have an account too as their Twitter handle was part of the bottom-of-frame super on all news programs, boldly accompanied by the commercial Twitter logo … good thing that those days seem to have gone …

  5. Is this only because Elon took over Twitter? It’s not a good look. The bullying has been going on for some years, but they only do something when Elon took over. Q+A recently mentioned ditching the on-screen Tweets from the show recently as well.

    It doesn’t bode well for trust, balance and neutrality of the ABC. It’s like saying it’s okay when it’s the other way around.

Leave a Reply