The Fall of Man and the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden by MichaelangeloWhile browsing the food blogosphere recently, I learned that a Chicago-based blogger, Don Baiocchi, had been fired from his job for his post entitled “Rachael Ray is Not God“. Although he does not name his employer, everyone assumes it was Sur La Table. Apparently, Don was not fired for the post itself, but for the comments that he allowed to be posted on his site. Whatever the reason, I encourage you to read Don’s piece. It is well-written, funny and in no way offensive to Rachael (as opposed to the Rachel Ray Sucks Community Blog or Rachael’s own Oct 2004 pinup spread in For Him Magazine). Nor is it critical of Sur la Table.
I actually learned a lot from Don’s post. I had no idea that Rachael was an industry unto herself (Eleven books to my count, two food-TV shows, now a talk show and a magazine?). Or that she had touched the lives of so many people. Wait, let me restate that – that she had touched so many people who have no lives. C’mon, now – Who else would stand in line for hours for a Rachael Ray book signing, then actually cry when they see her? Maybe they were homeless starving people who in their delirium of hunger misread the poster, thought she was serving up one of her signature 30-minute meals and then cried when they realized it was just her signature….
Back to the issue at hand, namely the dangers of blogging. From what I can tell, the number of bloggers in the unemployment line is growing daily. Some, I think, deserved to be canned. For instance, Jennifer the Washington aide-slut, who was fired for revealing the details of her simultaneous affairs with married government types. And Bizgirl, a librarian who was fired after she revealed in her blog that she had been pirating CD’s on the job.
For other ousted bloggers, the posts-at-fault contained comments not unlike those shared between disgruntled employees at the water cooler or after they’ve had a few drinks at happy hour. These range from mildly objectionable nicknames (Joe Gordon called his employer Waterstones bookstore “Bastardstones” and created a character called “Evil Boss”) to out-and-out offensive slurs (Heather B. Armstrong referred to an unnamed higher up as “The Vice President of Enabling his Fist up your Ass”. Ouch! That’s particularly harsh, Heather).
For ex-Google employee Mark Jen, the crime appears to have been revealing too much about the internal goings-on in a corporate culture based on secrecy. And in some instances, the reason for firing is totally unclear, as was the case of Meg, who was fired from DeVry University without any explanation, and Troutgirl, who was fired from Friendster for only-god-knows-why. Her very brief posts discussed technical issues of programming that apparently were public knowledge at the time. I read them and have no idea what she was talking about.
Why am I discussing all this? Well, as a blogger-newbie, I really am trying to learn the lay of the land and the rules of the game. Already, only three posts into my blogging career, I have been asked (understandably) by a friend to remove his last name in a post I had made. I had mistakingly assumed that since he had a web presence, his name was already out there. All of which got me to thinking very seriously about the potential privacy issues related to blogging.
There are so many things I’d love to write about in my blog, but as I consider the various venues (work, personal life, medical practice) I can see that there are land mines everywhere. Which may be why I started with what seems to be the safest topic – Food. But I do want to expand my blogging horizons, so I decided to seek out guidance in the place I love best – the Web.
Fortunately, others have considered these issues and there are some helpful guidelines out there. For instance, this article from the BBC, and another at the Electronic Frontier Foundation website (check out the links at the end of their article). Reporters without Borders has a two-part PDF handbook loaded with good information. Even Blogger has a guide. Looks like I’ve got some reading to do before I venture away from digestive topics.
Do I seem overly concerned to you? It may help you to know that I am one of those people who never keeps a diary because I am worried that if I die unexpectedly, my husband or kids or family would find it and read my secret thoughts, and god knows what would happen. And that I was raised Catholic, so I tend to feel guilty long before I’ve actually done anything.
Well, stay tuned and we will see where this blog thing takes me. Maybe straight to hell.
FYI- The official word for losing one’s job because of one’s website is “dooced”, coined by the above-mentioned Health B. Armstrong. Her site, Dooce.com, is the most hilarious damned thing I’ve read in a long time. She is more daring, brasher and yes, funnier than Jon Stewart (who, by the way, I have the serious hots for – we’ll talk about that another time…). Go read her site and laugh your head off.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Category: Considerations
Privacy is a thorny issue for bloggers. My maxim is: “Don’t blog what you don’t own.” For me, that means that I don’t blog about my marriage, because I don’t have sole ownership of that — my husband and I have joint ownership of it. Ditto work experiences, which I share ownership of with coworkers and clients. For friends, this means that they don’t have to worry that everything they tell me will end up on my weblog.
I do have a number of exceptions:
1. The Friendly Stranger Rule. If I applied the “don’t blog what you don’t own” rule strictly, it would restrict me, say, from mentioning that a friend had recently published a book. The intent of the policy, of course, isn’t to prevent me from congratulating my friend and letting others know about their book. I’ll blog about things if they are things that I might tell an interested, friendly stranger at a bus stop.
2. Public figures and elected officials — I think these are pretty kosher to blog about.
3. They’ve already blogged about it themselves.
Of course, there are more issues than privacy — like corrections, whether or not to delete an offensive comment, etc. Feel free to browse the ruleset I wrote for my blog, and a survey of blog policies with lots of examples.
Happy blogging!
Thanks, Lisa. I like what you say about ownership. I think I will compose a ruleset for my site.
I sit on an institutional IRB (a research review board), and in work am governed by the HIPAA rules of provacy. One of our tenets in the IRB is that no identifiable information can be used for research subjects. That means not only avoiding use of their name, but not being allowed to collect data, that when assembled, would allow the person to be identified by those who know them or could be used to find the person. In the hospital, this means information such as “a 65 year old female with sever hypertension who had a cholecystectomy on march 25.”. In blogland, this could be revealing that someone is a tax lawyer in Chicago who is married with 3 kids, loves the Cubs and pepperoni pizza, and by the way, likes to dress as a woman in his free time without his wife’s knowledge. Landmines, landmines….
Checked out your h20town site. Great idea, that.
I probably wouldn’t blog about the cross-dressing Cubs fan — his story, not mine! — but I would encourage them to start their own blog 🙂
There’s actually been a discussion going around the medbloggers’ universe about blog standards for people in medicine. Shrinkette talks about it here. And here’s my buddy Enoch Choi talking about Medbloggers at Bloggercon III. (While you’re at it, listen to this amazing session, which Enoch and I were both in the audience for; privacy issues were discussed for part of it The Emotional Life of Weblogs). You can listen online or download these for takeaway listening. Have a great 2006!
Thanks for the mention! Lisa has been one of my best friends for something like 15 years and we’re of the same mind about a great many things. I’m setting up some new house rules as we speak…
Meg: Do let me know when you post your rules. I’d love to read them. Thanks!
don was fired for offering to give out RR’s address and phone number to anyone who wanted it. He had access to her info because she had gone shopping in the store ater the book signing and had some items shipped to herself. It was in his comments which has since been eliminated from all sites.
Great article. I know of one of my previous colleagues [now in another job after being sacked] who decided to put up a blog of his company client details including Directors numbers, email addresses, sales etc. to show a friend who he was doing some work on the side for.
On his salary/promotion board meeting he was fired and threatened with legal action for breach of his contract and data protection.
His blog was found by SEO specialist working for and on behalf of the company who were setting up the company blog!,- and low and behold his name was on it!
Regards Simon dumville
YourBroadcaster
Published on: http://www.beforeyoutakethatpill.com
The Prevention of Ignorance
Historically, information sources provided to American citizens were limited due to the few methods available to the public, such as radio, TV, or news print. And also this information was subject to being filtered and, in some cases, delayed. This occurred for a number of reasons, which included political ones.
Now, and with arguably great elation, there is the internet, which can be rather beneficial for the average citizen.
Soon after the advent of the internet well over a decade ago, web logs were created, that are now termed ‘blogs’. At that time the blogs were referred to as personal journals or diaries visible on line. As time passed, blogs became a media medium, and blog communities evolved into addressing topics that often were not often addressed in mainstream media, as they crossed previously existing political and social lines. In addition, blogs provide immediate contributions by others, the readers of the posts of the blog authors, instead of the cumbersomeness of opinion and editorial pieces historically and not always presented in such media forms as newspapers or magazines.
The authors of blogs vary as far as their backgrounds and intent of what they choose to address on their blogs exactly, just as with other media forms. Some are employed by the very media sources that existed before them. Furthermore, they are not exonerated from the legalities of what is written, such as cases of libel. While we can presume that bloggers like to write, they may not be quality writers, yet several are in fact journalists, as well as doctors and lawyers, for example. But to write is to think, which I believe is a good quality one should have. Regardless, a type of Socratic learning seems to be occurring due to the advent of blogs.
Yet presently, blogs have become quite a driving force for those with objectives and issues often opposed by others, and therefore have become a serious threat to others. These others may be politicians, our government, or corporations- all of which have been known to monitor the content of certain blogs of concern to them for their potential to negatively affect their image or their activities previously undisclosed. This is why blogs, on occasion, have become a media medium for whistleblowers, which will be addressed further in a moment.
While one disadvantage of blogs is the potential lack of reliability, blogs however do allow in addition to the comments of its readers the posting of authentic internal or confidential documents that typically are not created to be viewed by the public, yet are acquired by certain bloggers. For example, blogger Dr. Peter Rost, a whistleblower himself, not long ago posted a newsletter published by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca on his blog site, and this newsletter was given to him by AstraZeneca’s employees who called themselves the ‘AZ Group of Seven’- with the intent of this group being to bring to the attention of others the illegal activity of off-label promotion of one of AZ’s cancer drugs promoted by their employer. Yet this particular concern by AZ seven, by surprise, is not what caught the attention of so many who viewed the posted newsletter by Dr. Rost and was read with great interest by others. It was instead a comment included in this newsletter that was stated by former regional AZ manager Mike Zubalagga, who was being interviewed by a district manager in this newsletter. Mr. Zubalagga, who in this newsletter posted on Dr Rost’s blog site, referred to doctors’ offices as ‘buckets of money’, which caught the attention of several readers. This and other statements by this man were in fact published in this newsletter clearly not reviewed before its publication. . Again, the statement and the newsletter created by AZ was indeed authentic and further validated due to the content being in the written word, which added credibility.
Mr. Zubalagga was fired the next day due to this ‘buckets of money’ comment due to the effect it had on the image of his employer. His manager resigned soon afterwards from AZ.
Blogs, one can safely conclude, reveal secrets.
And there have been other whistleblower cases on various blogs in addition to this one described a moment ago, which illustrates the power of blogs as being a very powerful and threatening media medium of valid information disclosure that others cannot prevent from occurring.
This, in my opinion, is true freedom of information- largely free of embellishments or selective omissions. It’s a step towards communication utopia, perhaps, yet a force that has the ability to both harm and protect many others.
Yet again, the information on these blogs should not be taken as absolute truth without proof to verify claims that may be made, as with other media sources. Of course, documents that are authentic is an example of a good validation source. And this, in my opinion, is the blog’s greatest value, combined with the comments on blogs from the growing number of readers who are allowed to contribute to the subject matter so quickly, which fuels the objectives of the blogs, which may be a type of Socratic learning.
Like other written statements, some on such internet sites are composed with respect of the written word. Others are not. It’s the freedom that may be most appealing of this new medium which has the ability to convert citizens into journalists who want to contribute to an issue of their concern they share with the blogger often with great conviction and accuracy.
Because we, the public, have a right to know what we are entitled to know and what we want to know. This is especially true if the information disclosed on blogs could potentially be adverse to our well-being.
Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is power.
“Information is the seed of an idea, and only grows when it’s watered.” — Heinz V. Berger
Dan Abshear
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