Having started off my blog wondering about bird flu, I want to round off this week by talking about foot-in-mouth disease - an ailment which seems to remain endemic in the PR industry, despite the fact that we all really ought to know better.
The
Register reported yesterday that cellphone giant
Orange had suspended its Community Affairs
Manager for some
comments elsewhere on the web which are, depending on your
point of view, at best spectacularly ill-advised, and at worst downright
offensive. Perhaps not a great career move for Inigo Wilson - in fact one
wonders how he'll play this one down in future job interviews.
Wal-Mart's
Andrew Young, at 74, might find this less of an immediate worry. But after this
week's racist tirade (
thanks, Wonkette, for the tip-off) I doubt he'll be
working in community relations again any time soon.
The danger, for
individuals in even semi-public life, of shooting themselves in the foot in this
way is nothing new. Margaret Thatcher told the Conservative Party Conference,
around about the same time I was born, that "It will be years, and not in my
lifetime, before a woman will lead the party or become Prime Minister". Tony
Blair and Gordon Brown were first elected to Parliament in 1983
on an
anti-nuclear ticket, and are now full square behind both
replacing Trident and
stimulating a new generation of privately-funded
nuclear power stations. None
of these three political careers have suffered irredeemable damage as a result
of the odd policy inconsistency or off-the-cuff remark.
The difference,
in the Web 2.0 era, is the immediacy and accessibility of what we write or say.
A flippant interview comment or heat-of-the moment blog post can be picked up by
a multitude of search engines in a matter of minutes. Emails are even worse,
taking on a life of their own the moment you hit 'send' - we've all seen
them.
Which is why, in my brief blogging career, I've taken to
"sanity-checking" my ideas before posting them. The lines between provoking
discussion, sparking controversy and causing offence are blurred and
easily-crossed, and an out-of-context comment could potentially cost today's
bloggers dear a decade or two hence. So, to the small number of you who've
become my voice of reason, thank you.
Back to bird 'flu: I'm told its
spread will be dictated by migratory patterns, and that as such we should all
start to worry again next month. In the meantime, let's all try to avoid
foot-in-mouth disease.
Tags:
Inigo Wilson