Police body takes on police bloggers

You could almost see it coming as in a previous posting I went to the length of noting the recent proliferation of police officers blogging about their work.

New Met blogging rules spark anger (Chris Vallance: BBC News: Technology) reports that the Metropolitan Police is taking up the challenge of what to do with a range of police-related employees commenting in various ways on police work. However, there is no talk of banning blogging, but the warnings contain some rather strong words - see MPS guidance on blogging courtesy of The Policeman's Blog for more details. Also follow this link to get an idea of what the Metropolitan Police may believe a police blog should look like (also courtesy of The Policeman's blog)!

The announcement also spurred BBC Five Live to run a feature on the matter - see Brian Hayes (Friday 10th March - skip to 1 hour and 7 minutes for 10 minute item on police blogs). You'll get to hear the thoughts of David Copperfield and Tom Reynolds from Random Acts of Reality (this link summarises his thought on the matter).

I was contacted late on Friday to take part in the show but they couldn't get hold of me. I suppose it's because of the discussion paper I wrote on work-related blogs. From my experience I see no good reason to equate blogging about work with any deliberate intent to damage the reputation of an employer. The main issue appears to be bloggers contravening employers wishes to wish to paint a highly sanitized and ultimately untruthful account of their organization.

Some more alternative accounts of working life (and non-working life as well) can be considered with the following blogs recently added to my blogroll: Dust in the wind (Registered nurse) - Feel good librarian - Geek nurse -Happyville library (librarian) - The vampire librarian.

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