In this piece at Tech Central station, Jim Miller wonders if soon everybody will be afraid to talk about anything for fear of being savaged by those horrid bloggers.
In the cases he brings up, these are not ordinary people having mundane conversations in the break room. These are high-profile individuals making public statements that quite a number of people found offensive, or somehow wrong, or whatever.
In the most basic Media 101, you learn to think before you speak. It's been true for quite some time that it's just not smart to think it's OK to make any statement that may be harmful to yourself, your company, your constituents, etc. in any situation where a media rep is within hearing distance. I tell students the tape recorder is never turned off. This applies equally to company luncheons, e-mail discussion groups, and anywhere else you're away from your defined group of individuals or places where you know for sure nobody is listening. You put on your public face the minute you leave home in the morning and it should stay in place until you're "at home" for the night.
It is not easy, not always comfortable, but it is a truth of being what you could call "high profile."
It's certainly nothing new.
It also has nothing to do with actual private conversations somehow becoming public. People who aren't trained in dealing with being in the public eye tend to have this (mistaken) impression of an all-knowing, all seeing media force that has a magic ability to know everything. It is in fact, one of the biggest obstacles I've encountered in teaching writers to promote their works. They tend to think that somehow "the media" already knows about their events and appearances without being told about them. It is something that they need to overcome, if they ever expect to get any airtime.
I think this kind of discussion, of there being some loss of privacy or whatever, is kind of off the mark, even considering the internet and bloggers, and the wide-open nature of a lot of media these days.
There are juvenile bloggers who would think it's fun to circulate locker room conversations, but in the world of grownups, there are rules of behaviour and social discourse that still apply, no matter what kind of technology you can access.
I think if anyone is concerned about what his wife is learning about him ought to figure out what's going on in the relationship, not blame the technology for making it possible for her to find out things.
THX to the Blog Herald for pointing this out!
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