stickwhistler
12-11-2009, 05:13 PM
EXCLUSIVE: Dick Fedorcio, Met Police blogger engagement and my part in it...
Simon Collister - simonsays
November 11 2009
I published a blog post earlier this year in which I questioned the
Metropolitan Police's approach to social media and criticised what I
perceived to be the wrong organisational attitude.
Rather than looking to embrace social media, listen, adapt and respond
to the public and earn the reputation it deserves, comments made by
the Met's Director of External Affairs, Dick Fedoricio, in a PR Week
interview suggested otherwise:
"If I was seeking to manipulate people, it would raise a question
about how that reduced our integrity. To be leaning on someone to say
"give us a good blog" starts to raise some ethical issues."
I wanted to return to this issue for a couple of reasons. Primarily, I
was shocked (but unsurprised) to see that according the Evening
Standard, the Met has now requested that all imagery of its officers
hiding or obscuring their badges be removed from photo libraries and
image databases (hiding numbers means officers can't be (easily)
identified and is an illegal tactic usually performed to allow police
to act with impunity while committing - often violent - offences
against the public).
While the Standard accuses the Met of trying to "re-write history", a
member of the public gets it right in a comment posted on the story:
"If people start uploading such images to Facebook and Twitter, will
they get their collars felt? We seem to be heading in that direction."
Leaving aside the jusdgement of which direction society is heading,
the issue of whether material incriminating authorities published
publicly in the social web can be removed remains - as does the
question: what power do authorities have to, in DIck's words,
"manipulate" or "lean on" someone to force removal?
Following the G20 the Met has signed up 6Consulting and Radian6 to run
social media monitoring for the force so it's very likely that any
'offending' material will certainly be identified. That said, I return
to the point I made originally which was that this approach reveals a
traditional command and control communications culture at the Met
which will not fit in the distributed, complex, networked world in
which we now live.
I mentioned there were a couple of reasons I wanted to blog about this
topic again. That's the first, the second is much more personal.
After my previous post in which the Met's Dick Fedorcio told PR Week
that he will "not go as far as interacting with bloggers" he went
right ahead by 'interacting' with me.
So how did he interact with me? Was it a comment left on my blog post
examining the Met's approach to social media? Was it an email
explaining the Met's decision not to interact with bloggers?
No. Instead Dick left me a voicemail on my work phone. Why he phoned
me at work I don't know (especially given my blog states clearly it's
a personal site and encourages contact via my personal email address).
Dick's voicemail was rather aggressive (I'm sure this was
unintentional) and stated that he worked for Scotland Yard (again,
this is confusing, but I'm sure he meant the Metropolitan Police).
He advised me, in a rather intimidating fashion, that if I planned on
blogging about the Met again I should give him a call in advance.
Now I'm sure Dick meant only well by his inadvertently aggressive and
intimidating phonecall advising I seek permission before blogging
about the Met, but it seems clear to me that the Met are doing blogger
engagement, despite what they tell PR Week.
Plus ca change...
------------------------------------------------
http://www.simoncollister.com/simonsays/2009/11/exclusive-met-police-blogger-engagement-and-my-part-in-it.html
Simon Collister - simonsays
November 11 2009
I published a blog post earlier this year in which I questioned the
Metropolitan Police's approach to social media and criticised what I
perceived to be the wrong organisational attitude.
Rather than looking to embrace social media, listen, adapt and respond
to the public and earn the reputation it deserves, comments made by
the Met's Director of External Affairs, Dick Fedoricio, in a PR Week
interview suggested otherwise:
"If I was seeking to manipulate people, it would raise a question
about how that reduced our integrity. To be leaning on someone to say
"give us a good blog" starts to raise some ethical issues."
I wanted to return to this issue for a couple of reasons. Primarily, I
was shocked (but unsurprised) to see that according the Evening
Standard, the Met has now requested that all imagery of its officers
hiding or obscuring their badges be removed from photo libraries and
image databases (hiding numbers means officers can't be (easily)
identified and is an illegal tactic usually performed to allow police
to act with impunity while committing - often violent - offences
against the public).
While the Standard accuses the Met of trying to "re-write history", a
member of the public gets it right in a comment posted on the story:
"If people start uploading such images to Facebook and Twitter, will
they get their collars felt? We seem to be heading in that direction."
Leaving aside the jusdgement of which direction society is heading,
the issue of whether material incriminating authorities published
publicly in the social web can be removed remains - as does the
question: what power do authorities have to, in DIck's words,
"manipulate" or "lean on" someone to force removal?
Following the G20 the Met has signed up 6Consulting and Radian6 to run
social media monitoring for the force so it's very likely that any
'offending' material will certainly be identified. That said, I return
to the point I made originally which was that this approach reveals a
traditional command and control communications culture at the Met
which will not fit in the distributed, complex, networked world in
which we now live.
I mentioned there were a couple of reasons I wanted to blog about this
topic again. That's the first, the second is much more personal.
After my previous post in which the Met's Dick Fedorcio told PR Week
that he will "not go as far as interacting with bloggers" he went
right ahead by 'interacting' with me.
So how did he interact with me? Was it a comment left on my blog post
examining the Met's approach to social media? Was it an email
explaining the Met's decision not to interact with bloggers?
No. Instead Dick left me a voicemail on my work phone. Why he phoned
me at work I don't know (especially given my blog states clearly it's
a personal site and encourages contact via my personal email address).
Dick's voicemail was rather aggressive (I'm sure this was
unintentional) and stated that he worked for Scotland Yard (again,
this is confusing, but I'm sure he meant the Metropolitan Police).
He advised me, in a rather intimidating fashion, that if I planned on
blogging about the Met again I should give him a call in advance.
Now I'm sure Dick meant only well by his inadvertently aggressive and
intimidating phonecall advising I seek permission before blogging
about the Met, but it seems clear to me that the Met are doing blogger
engagement, despite what they tell PR Week.
Plus ca change...
------------------------------------------------
http://www.simoncollister.com/simonsays/2009/11/exclusive-met-police-blogger-engagement-and-my-part-in-it.html