CBF microblogging away his command

British Forces Gibraltar and CBF Expect Everyone to Follow Them on Twitter For News!

British Forces Gibraltar, nowadays expect everyone to follow them on their twitter account.

Twitter is no substitute for a formal or official press release. Not every journalist or news media hangs out all day on twitter or has their notifications set to receive short messages from these online social networking platforms.

As for microblogging, this is typically posting frequent brief messages about personal or official activities on social media. The shorter the better, as seen from the efforts by the CBF. Microblogging, is a real killer for public relations; literally. Particularly, if you want to say as little as possible and have zero human contact with the public. A clear trait the CBF displays and practices!

Commander British Forces Gibraltar Commodore Tim Henry appears not to favour the traditional manner of sharing or passing on official information to the press and public. Instead, CBF prefers to go on Twitter, it’s not used by British Forces Gibraltar as complimentary to a press release, but as a replacement distribution platform, of everything British Forces Gibraltar is up to on the Rock or what it wants the natives to know.

It’s now left to the public and the media, as far as Panorama is concerned, to encounter all British Forces Gibraltar related news by chance on social media. This, really is no more than “incidental news consumption”, which can be detrimental to audiences’ but it’s also recognised as a bad and lazy counterproductive habit of distributing official news, particularly, from an organisation like the Ministry of Defence!

To confirm or prove this point, only yesterday (Monday) I had to resort to the online world of CBF to obtain some significant news involving the British Forces Gibraltar and the arrival of the two new patrol vessels for the Gib Squadron. The information on this important news story of great public interest was, as you would expect on twitter sparse, written with only a few morsel bits of information and the rest of the tweet dominated by hashtags applied to different organisations to follow the story.

The latter story, was extensively covered in Panorama’s Monday edition, but with considerably more related information than the CBF managed to convey to the public in his otherwise hashtag filled tweet. Especially on an important MOD related news item of huge public interest!

Similarly, yesterday, CBF also took part in the Government’s Monday Covid-19 press briefing, though on this occasion, instead of appearing in person from No 6 he decided to post his address on twitter, where else?

I must admit, I had to revert to the MOD Gibraltar twitter account to obtain some additional information for this report. Failing the latter effort would have meant knowing nothing at all of MOD activity in Gibraltar.

Sadly, for the older generation in particular, it is impossible for them to obtain news from British Forces Gibraltar. As many of our senior citizens do not frequent or have the technology to view the CBF in twitter, working life of short bits of information. This puts this important and respected group in society at a disadvantage. I am aware of this, because I have had this conversation with some of our elders, where some do not even know who today Commands British Forces in Gibraltar?

MORE IN PANORAMA PRINT EDITION

24-06-2020 PANORAMAdailyGIBRALTAR