Press Publish and Be Damned
“Things are going to happen that you’ll want to put on your Bebo” says a favourite family member, “But you’ve not to, okay?”.I don’t point out to her that I’m not on Bebo, and that what I do is called a Blog, for I know what she means and I don’t want to come across as argumentative as well as horrifically indiscreet and all loose cannony.
I am to go to a family event where members of an extended family whom I’ve never met but I am assured are wild and colourful and BLOGGABLE will be there. It’s going to be too much to bear but I am used to having to stifle the blogging urge when anything good happens. I worked in an FE college for six years for goodness sakes, every day was a blog I couldn’t write.
Effectively there’s only three sets of folk that I am allowed to take the absolute rip out of:
Set One: Me
This week someone who blogs to great acclaim got a similar yet far more official type of warning. NightJack the formerly anonymous police blogger had his identity outed by a journalist and was told to blog no more lest he lose his job. In fact, he’s already been given a written warning.
On finding out he was to be outed NightJack tried to get an injunction to stop his identity being revealed. However the judge saw no reason why anyone who chose to write about their life on the internet should be given any kind of privacy or protection. What a shame this is. Mainly I think for the police force itself. What amazing PR the NightJack blog has been. The police have a hard time gaining public sympathy and the fact that someone was blogging about what it was like at the sharp end of regular policing seemed to me to be a vent for unofficial view about what police officers have to face on a daily basis and a commentary on how they really feel about government law and order initiatives and news coverage of what they do. This is not only compelling for a reader but, secretly, I bet every police officer who read it was silently cheering NightJack on for putting their point of view across.
Another excellent emergency services blog (and latterly a book), Random Acts of Reality, written by an ambulanceman got the full backing of the Ambulance Service for that reason.
I can see both sides of the argument. On the one hand a no holds barred account of policing gives a view into a profession that those not in it will never otherwise empathise with, but on the other hand you could argue that the views represented are not being sanctioned by the police PR machine and may even prejudice court cases in more extreme examples. NightJack was always very careful to make sure no prejudicial details were included and that no names were ever used, but you can see the danger nonetheless, I suppose.
I’m sure that the police force were secretly happy to let an anonymous police officer blog in the way NightJack did and were privately pretty pissed off when his identity was revealed. As soon as his name was in the public domain they had to do something about him and more importantly, be seen to do something about him.
What I really don’t understand is the motives of the journalist who outed him. I can only assume they concern professional jealousy of his award winning success. How would that journalist feel, for example, if his sources were revealed? It’s a shame that the judge didn’t look upon the blogger’s anonymity in the same way.
Anyway, it’s the blogger’s lot; publish and be damned…or lose your jobs and friends if you write up the really juicy stuff. All the best subjects are ones which you shouldn’t really touch. Like family events which are like an episode of Shameless.
Still as long as I’ve got Meeester taunting me to blog about him with japes like this to catch my attention, then I’ll never be short of material.
Meeester’s latest cry for blogattention:
Putting fake flowers in the shrubbery
