Thats right, web logs are clearly gaining popularity in old media. I was reading the newspaper, and watching some television earlier, and to my shock, have just been bombarded with information about websites and the logs that people keep.
Of interest would be related to the Moorabbin police murders, that happened back in 1998. The news on every channel has brought up the topic of Jason Roberts “web of lies” (tomorrow’s newspaper, today!). He’s got a website, with some journal entries of his prison life up on the Internet. He tends to mention that he’s innocent, has his postal address, and a bunch of poems as well as pictures available for the public to read. Whats really interesting is that his website isn’t searchable via Google (or any other major search engine that I tried), but I found it at a most interesting place – Wikipedia!
An excerpt from the latest Wikipedia history
Clearly the anonymous benefactor of the URL to Wikipedia is a Telstra customer (or on a Telstra owned IP block). If the counter is working, I am visitor number 297. I wonder what these numbers will grow to, with curious onlookers searching for the website later today, and probably tomorrow when it hits mainstream dead tree newspapers.
Then, in today’s Age, The Barbados Butterfly (archived via the Wayback Machine), an anonymous blog, setup by a surgeon, Jillian Tomlinson, has now become invite-only, and she’s been suspended for a week from The Alfred Hospital. The blog contained very little identifying details, and Jillian mentions she wanted to use the blog for teaching medical students to identify ailments from pictures posted. She believes that the blog helped her reflect on her job. From taking a cursory look at the archives, it does seem like it was completely a personal blog, with some meme’s posted as well. There is also a lengthy blogroll of other “doctor weblogs”.
Has any other doctor blogged about possibly confidential information (after all, what you say to a doctor is private and confidential) and been given the sack or a suspension? Does the act of blogging about your work violate medical ethics?
This wouldn’t be the first time someone is being suspended over a blog entry, or a web log in general. Will we be seeing a rise in people getting into trouble over their blog entries, based on violating corporate secrets, ethics, or just plain venting?
Technorati Tags: weblog, blog, jason roberts, web of lies, journal entries, prison life, wikipedia, barbados butterfly, jillian tomlinson, alfred hospital, blog from a doctor, medical ethics, melbourne, australia