Nice piece from Jo Twist at the BBC Online about the legal ramifications of reporting corporate issues on personal blogs. Crossing the line can result in being ‘dooced’ or losing your job for something you write on a personal blog. Clearly companies can protect their reputations through legal means, and have done repeatedly in the past. Prevention being better than cure, I think that the ethics of business (or blogging if you like) do require a certain responsibility to one’s employer, if that’s the source of much of the blog’s content. This isn’t just counsel not to ‘bite the hand that feeds you’, but that information gained in a corporate context should be treated as such in a private one.

As PR professionals we’re privy to a lot of confidential information. Clients can expect that information to remain confidential outside of working hours, and that surely includes reporting it on blogs as much as indiscretion at a dinner party.