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The Sun tells BBC not to tweet its front pages night before they hit newsstands in bid to ‘drive traffic’ through own channels

By Sam Forsdick

The Sun is has told the BBC not to tweet its front pages on social media the evening before the paper arrives on newsstands.

The UK’s best-selling newspaper will instead share its front page on the official Sun Twitter account, @thesun, which has 1.4m followers.

BBC staff regularly publish the UK national newspaper front pages on Twitter using the hashtag #tomorrowspaperstoday.

They will no longer include the Sun, but the title will still be reviewed in round-ups broadcast by the BBC and others, as well as online.

A Sun spokesperson said: “We’re just trying to see if we can drive traffic through our own accounts and channels.

“Our splashes regularly set the agenda on Twitter, and we certainly thank the #tomorrowspaperstoday team for helping us do that in the past and their service is no doubt appreciated by many.

“But those exclusives and trademark witty headlines don’t just happen, and bringing people to the site and the paper are key to helping us invest in more of the same for many years to come.”

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Neil Henderson, BBC news desk editor, who regularly tweets the UK papers’ front pages, said in a post on Twitter: “We’ve been asked by the Sun not to tweet their front or back pages in future.

“Sad, but we’re happy to continue to promote and cheer on all the other great papers and journalists that make up #tomorrowspaperstoday.”

Responding to Henderson’s tweet, Sun editor Tony Gallagher said: “No scrap and nothing personal. Your service is great but we’ll tweet it from our account.”

Henderson, who has over 70,000 followers, added: “It’s ironic really, looking back at the number of times I’ve gone into bat for the Sun and pointed out that it would be wrong to censor them from only for them to withdraw unilaterally.

“I should say that I respect their decision – it’s their content after all.”

The BBC has previously blurred the front page images of the Times and Telegraph on its paper round-up following advice on reporting suicide by the Samaritans charity.

The two front pages used photos of a Bosnian Croat war criminal drinking poison whilst on trial at The Hague.

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