Orwell got it wrong. It’s not the government watching over us, it’s our bosses.
In an article I read today, Amy Joyce, a workplace columnist for the Washington Post, spells it out: Blogging, even anonymously, can get you fired.
She tells the story of Rachel Mosteller, who says she was fired for blogging that she hated her place of employment and the little morale-boosters they give you just for doing your job. Never did Mosteller say where she worked, nor did she ever name a coworker or boss and didn’t even name herself. The only identifying information she gave about her job was by using the word “newsroom.” Joyce went on to quote an employment attorney who said that even anonymous blogs about an employer can get an employee fired in most states.
My impulse is to raise a ruckus over the first amendment. But most companies must have policies around what their users are allowed to say about them on the Web. For instance, you don’t want them divulging corporate secrets in a chat room or on a bulletin board, even if they’re communicating with peers to seek solutions to technical, engineering or strategy problems.
I also believe there should be some types of checks and balances around bloggers’ freedom to say whatever the heck they want, given they’re open to liable and defamation suits just like the rest of us.
But just how far should these checks and balances go? Should someone be fired for posting their picture wearing their work uniform, which happened to another subject in Joyce’s column. Or should companies encourage blogging, the way Network World does, in order to reach out to its communities of interest? If so, companies need to build policies around what’s acceptable to post, and maybe even pass these blogs through an editor first.
