Any organization that publishes best-seller lists is on notice: Your list could become the megaphone that amplifies the message of somebody else’s agenda.

Bum-rushing the charts is a social media phenomenon. In the days before we could all communicate with each other in real time, bestsellers earned their spots on lists based on the author’s history (Stephen King will always make the top 10 of The New York Times bestseller list), good marketing and slow-building word of mouth. Now that we all have our own audiences, it’s easy to issue a call to action: “Could you all buy my book on April 15 so it’ll rise to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list?”

So far, though, this increasingly routine tactic has been employed in pursuit of individual success. The passing of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, though, has introduced a new wrinkle.

Members of the anti-Thatcher faction tapped into social channels to spread the idea of buying “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead,” the munchkin-sung tune from the iconic 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. With 20,000 copies sold, the song was number one on British iTunes and number two on the chart the BBC uses to assemble the list for its weekly countdown,  which meant that the BBC would have had to play it on their weekly chart broadcast.

Because of the insensitivity of the tactic, the BBC opted not to play it, announcing instead that the show would feature only a five-second clip of the song, as part of a news report to be featured within the show. The decision led to cries of censorship. Details of the dust-up are in this Standard report.

Neville Hobson and I discussed the story on For Immediate Release. But the issue is certain to transcend Thatcher’s passing and a single UK radio broadcast. Other activist groups are surely paying attention considering the amount of media coverage the story generated (evidenced by the Slate article shown above). And with access to more followers than many authors have audiences, activist groups involved in any number of controversies undoubtedly will apply the tactic again in other situations.

A representative from the BBC, asked how the broadcaster would handle a similar situation in the future. His answer: The BBC would cross that bridge when they came to it. In other words, there was no policy to guide the organization in this kind of situation.

My first visceral reaction to the story was simple: If the song earned its way onto the charts, and the BBC’s show plays the songs on the charts, this song should have been played. Bum-rushing the charts is commonplace and this will happen again. The BBC can’t make a discrete decision every time it comes up.

Upon reflection, though, I wondered about (for example) a neo-Nazi organization tapping into its supporters to drive Mein Kampf to the top of the charts. Does The New York Times list it as its number-one bestseller when it’s so clearly an orchestrated gaming of the system?

There are hundreds of charts and lists out therebased purely on sales or download data, published by organizations whose reputations may soon ride on how they handle this emerging form of activism. With the Thatcher story getting so much attention, it’ll be sooner rather than later when these organizations must deal with it. It’s time for all these organizations to start the discussion about a policy to govern their decisions when the situation does arise.