A regional publisher has suspended use of a programme used to upload stories to Facebook for a second time.

Johnston Press has told staff to avoid using Social Flow, a programme used by journalists to schedule social media posts for specific times, while an investigation is carried out after content failed to appear properly on the Facebook channels of some of its titles.

JP staff have instead been told they should now manually publish online story links directly to Facebook pages and check all content “both before and after publication”.

The suspension of Social Flow use was announced yesterday evening and is expected to last for at least one week.

Earlier this year JP apologised and suspended use of Social Flow after a photograph of a Sikh parade wrongly appeared next to a story about the UK’s most wanted sex offenders on the Morley Observer’s Facebook page.

At the time, Social Flow chief executive Jim Anderson blamed the error on the correct picture being too small to meet Facebook’s requirements.

HTFP understands JP staff were given the green light to use Social Flow a number of weeks after that incident occurred.

It is understood the latest suspension has not been implemented because of any specific incident.

In a message to staff, which has been seen by HTFP, JP director of digital content Martin Little said: “An issue has arisen in the publishing process where content has not appeared on Facebook as was demonstrated/previewed in Social Flow. There remains a risk this could happen again.

“As a result, we are withdrawing Social Flow from the business immediately for an initial period of one week while investigations into the cause continue. Staff should now publish directly to Facebook pages and check all content, both before and after publication.

“All content previously scheduled for publishing should be removed from the social queue and manually published on Facebook. We will keep you all updated with progress.”

A spokesman for Social Flow said: “We don’t believe this is correct and is an issue that was resolved several months ago. We defer all comments about Johnston Press and their actions to them.”

JP has declined to comment.