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Guidance_Links_and_feeds.txt
Key Points All links on grand loot slotthe BBC Public Service site or on the editorial pages of a BBC Commercial site must be editorially justifiable Audiences need to be confident that our decisions on using links and feeds are influenced neither by political or commercial pressures, nor by any personal interests A link must never be included on the Public Service site or within the editorial content of a commercial site in return for cash, services or any other consideration in kind. An external site which is a candidate for a link should, generally, be relevant to the BBC content from which a link is envisaged and meet the expectations of the likely audience. The producer must check the contents of the external site before adding a link to a BBC page. BBC sites which cover matters of controversy or public policy may offer links to external sites which, taken together, represent a reasonable range of views about the subject. For programme support pages, an external link should be justified by the relevance and value of the material to the programme's audience. When linking to any commercial site, great care must be taken to avoid giving the impression that the BBC is endorsing a commercial product or service. Links from individual pages on the Public Service site to the BBC's Commercial sites are acceptable only when clearly editorially justified. It is likely to be editorially justifiable to link directly to the source of tickets if the event for which the tickets are being sold is a BBC Event. If not, a link to eg the band's own site would be editorially justifiable, from where a user can click to the ticket agency's site. Pulling third party feeds onto BBC Online pages is more editorially sensitive, because users expect the feeds to have been through a rigorous editorial examination and to comply with BBC editorial standards. The person responsible for the page on which a feed or embed appears will be responsible for the content from that feed or embed and should be prepared to remove links quickly, if necessary. It should be clear to audiences whenever content is taken in from an external supplier. Audiences should be able to easily report errors or inappropriate content. It should be clear that an inbound embed (for example, of video from a social networking site) is not under the editorial control of the BBC and is not primarily the responsibility of the BBC. But editors are responsible for deciding what non-BBC content to embed on BBC pages and should be alert to the possibility of the original content being changed or removed and to rights issues.
