Results tagged “iraq” from Birmingham Mail - Technobabble

The 'outing' of police blogger Detective Constable Richard Horton poses some interesting questions.

For those who haven't been following the story, he wrote an interesting, provocative, humane, touching and thoughtful blog about the day to day life of a copper.

The fact that he wrote it anonymously annoyed some people.

Eventually he was tracked down and finally named after Mr Justice Eady ruled he had no 'reasonable expectation of privacy', so lifting an injunction which he won against the Times.

So he's now known, and his blog is finished. After all a serving police office couldn't write 'live' about cases he's dealing with.

Simple considerations like contempt of court would be regularly breached as in many cases the blogs, hitherto impossible to link with specific incidents, would easily be traced, and would breach the Magistrates Court Act, which, once a person has been charged, allows only ten details (age, name, charges etc) to be printed until a trial begins or the person pleads guilty.

DC Horton received a written warning from Lancashire police and his 'Nightjack' blog has now been deleted.

Shame really - it gave a real insight into the police, and the strange world of some forgotten estates they so regularly visit (and which are completely alien and unknown to so much of the population).

Another recent emergency services blogger has been more sympathetically treated - Tom Reynolds, an ambulance worker whose Random Acts of Reality site has been given support from his health authority.

In this case his employers, while not endorsing everything he says, realise that a true to life blog by a committed and caring worker generates sympathy and understanding of what they are trying to achieve.

For me, this is what 'Citizen Journalism' is all about. Not about just sitting alone in a bedroom blogging, commenting, retweeting (etc) blindly about what someone else is doing just so you can be first with something.

This is creating something worthwhile, interesting, moving, and real.

This issue also has some resonance with the debate currently taking place over the inquiry into Iraq.

In the case of DC Horton it was impossible for him to blog when it was known who he was.

He could harm court cases, make himself liable to defamation suits and almost certainly lose his job.

In the case of the Iraq inquiry, some people have said they will only give evidence if it is heard in private, presumably for similar reasons.

It is a difficult line to walk - do we want as close to the whole truth as possible or something which has been effectively castrated? (And in the case of the Iraq inquiry there is also the question of what will be revealed in the end.)

I'd certainly rather read Nightjack than some pre employer approved anodyne nonsense.