Guidelines

TVNewsTalk.net Forum Rules

Updated: April 8, 2019

TVNewsTalk.net is an open community for those interested in television news. In order to ensure quality, informative discussion and interaction, we have established the following rules. In doing so, we aim to provide a place that can be enjoyed by all. As a reminder, all content and actions on TVNewsTalk are governed by the Terms of Service.

The Administrators and Moderators of TVNewsTalk reserve the right to move, remove, or edit content that breaches these rules and/or terms, and to restrict or ban users who act in violation of them.

First and foremost, you and only you are responsible for what you post here. All content posted to this site is the responsibility of the person that posted it, as governed under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (47 U.S.C. § 230©(1)) TVNewsTalk and it's operators, moderators, and host cannot be held liable for content posted to the website by its users.

Content Submission Standards:

Content submitted to TVNewsTalk must meet the following standards:

• Content must be verifiable. - Claims presented as fact must be supported by evidence. If you cannot back up your claims, do not post them.
• Content must not be harassing, threatening, hateful, or sexually explicit. - Whether directed at another site member, a television station employee, or a random member of the public, harassment, hate speech, and the like are prohibited. 
• Content must not be invasive of a person's privacy. - Don’t post an individual's personal information without their consent, even if they have posted it online elsewhere.
• Content must not infringe Copyright law. - Any materials promoting the infringement of copyright is expressly forbidden anywhere on the site, including the Private Message system. This includes requests or offers for news music packages and station graphic files.
  • Posts directing users to corporate or network websites that are obviously not meant for public access are not allowed.
• Content must not advertise or promote goods and/or services. - Any form of advertising or solicitation is forbidden anywhere on TVNewsTalk, whether publicly posted or sent through private messages. Advertisers who wish to advertise on TVNewsTalk should contact the site administration via the contact form in the site footer.

In addition to these five key content standards, TVNewsTalk upholds the following Standards of Quality:

• Content must be civil and tasteful. - TVNewsTalk upholds its users to a "work safe" standard. This is perhaps the hardest standard to enforce. Naturally, there will be differences of opinion on what constitutes "civil and tasteful". You may, at any time, block a user you believe posts in a matter that you personally find distasteful via your User Control Panel.
• Content should not be disruptive to the flow of conversation. - Avoid going significantly off-topic and make sure your posts make sense. Posting low-quality one liner posts and responses (e.g. "I agree!" "Yeah." "Is it done yet?") disrupts the flow of conversation and adds no constructive discussion to the conversation.  Excessive use of capital letters (TYPING IN ALL CAPS) is not allowed. Nonsensical posts and posts that do not follow the basic rules of the English language are likely to be removed. Avoid ranting.
• Content should not disrupt the flow of the forum. - Please ensure that the thread you are replying to has been active recently. There is rarely a good reason to bump a thread that hasn’t been posted in for two years. Continuously dredging up old threads for no real reason will result in a loss of posting privileges. This includes bumping inactive topics with no purpose other than to bring awareness to the inactive thread.
• Content should encourage constructive discussion. - Threads that exist to list information (e.g. "Your Favorite Stations", "Favorite Anchors", "What Does Your Stations Legal ID Say", etc.), exist to function as a database of information (e.g. "Stations Using Hello News", "Stations that use Accuweather", "When does the morning news start", etc.) or exist to collect and catalog content (such as videos and screenshots) are heavily moderated and may be removed with no warning. If you wish to start a thread like this, please contact the site administration. Additionally, creating threads that have no real topic of discussion (such as a "general" thread about a particular company or station) is not allowed without permission from the administration.
• Own your Content. - Don’t just drop a link somewhere or copy and paste an article from another source and hit the Submit button.

If you find content posted to the site that appears to violate these standards, please use the "Report post" link that is found on every post. TVNewsTalk staff will evaluate the content and take whatever actions they deem necessary. Please do not backseat moderate and/or call out the problematic content with additional posts, as this just creates more work for the site staff. This sort of behavior may get you into trouble, as well as the person who posted the offending material!

Account Restriction and Termination:
Failure to abide by our Content Submission Standards may result in action being taken against your account. TVNewsTalk uses a points-based warning system for offenses, with punishments getting more severe with every point issued. This is outlined below.

• 1st Point: A warning, no action is taken against your account.
• 2nd Point: Content you submit to the site will be reviewed by moderators before being made public. This restriction expires after seven days.
• 3rd Point: Your account is barred from submitting any content to the site for seven days.
• 4th Point: Your account is suspended from accessing the site for 14 days.
• 5th Point: Your account is permanently disabled.

Points generally expire six months after they are issued. In certain circumstances, points may expire after one year.  When necessary, TVNewsTalk Staff has the ability to bypass the points system and limit activity immediately.

This document is not an exhaustive list of rules and regulations, and TVNewsTalk staff is expected to uphold "the spirit of the law" over the "letter of the law".