#bbcsms: How should journalists treat what they learn on social media?

Video of the second session, 'Editorial Issues', from day two of #bbcsms:

'Editorial Issues': Report from the second session on day two of #bbcsms:

NPR journalist Andy Carvin describes his own style of journalism using social media in an interview for the BBC's Social Media Summit.

In it, he assesses the value of monitoring and passing on a huge number of links and stories from his Washington office - and its limitations.

Carvin doesn't claim his kind of work should be used instead of journalists working in the field. "You still need networks of sources," he says, "and those correspondent instincts."

But when field reporters in Tripoli were unable to move around the city freely, he said he could help them with information he'd gleaned online remotely.

A discussion at the #bbcsms session included criticism of Carvin's work for passing on rumours and "adding fuel to the fire", and that his work wasn't as speedy as some claimed: "It's not in real time."

Original blog post introducing second session on day two of #bbcsms:

In the States, NPR's Andy Carvin has created his own style of journalism as a kind of super-tweeter. According to the Washington Post, his output offers "a dizzying, non-stop ride across the geopolitical landscape, 140 characters at a time".

Carvin has been known to tweet 1,600 messages in less than 24 hours, gathering material -for instance, on Middle East revolutions - from the relative comfort of his NPR cubicle in Washington.

This kind of remote reporting - somehow both authoritative and second-hand - raises new editorial questions which will be discussed in the second session of the BBC Social Media Summit which includes a special filmed interview with him.

Carvin's work is just one example of new editorial issues created by social media.

There are also emerging, urgent questions about: social media and defamation; impartiality in the context of so much information about individual journalists being so easily available; and the criteria journalists should use to verify social media content.

Please contribute your thoughts, ideas and experiences in Comments below, and we'll feed them into the debate on Friday. What practical changes should we be focussing on?

Details of the Summit and confirmed guests here; list of attendees here.