It is 4.40pm in the UK and the picture on Flickr of Jackie Danicki's alleged 'attacker' has now been viewed 17,050 times. Her original post has generated 222 comments - most supportive, some highly offensive, and they include links out to reposts on at least 19 blogs.
One of the more interesting threads is developed by Sally on Getting Ink (rather a good blog in its own right). Amy Gahran has commented on the Poynter Institute site, as has Mindy McAdams at Teaching Online Journalism.
If Jackie's latest posting is anything to go by, the incident is of more interest to the blogosphere than the police. Maybe someone in the police press office should be watching this conversation and have a little think about the force's perceived inactivity is playing out....
I have been in contact with Jo Bird, head of media and marketing for the British Transport Police, and outright begged her to get someone at the BTP to contact me. She promised to do what she could, but I have had no reply to the subsequent email I sent her in which I told her I had still not heard a thing. (I now have heard from the BTP, as I have blogged.) As a former head of marketing, I'm pretty surprised at the way Bird has half-handled my appeal to her.
Posted by: Jackie Danicki | December 02, 2006 at 12:46 PM
http://www.jackiedanicki.com/?p=961
I want to hear some more about how trying to find these guys before they hurt somebody else is a "lynching."
Posted by: Jim Treacher | December 04, 2006 at 09:47 PM
Thanks for the update, Jackie.
Jim, I certainly haven't used the word 'lynching' on Mediations... As I have said, I am studying the way messages travel around the blogosphere from the perspective of an academic interested in PR ethics. From the outset I have tied not to comment (publicly) on Jackie's experience but that doesn't mean I have no sympathy for her experience, nor that I don't want to see it properly resolved.
Posted by: Philip Young | December 05, 2006 at 10:06 AM
Ethics in PR should be pretty straightforward: Be transparent. Be truthful. Do not deceive. Listen at least as much as you talk. Not so different from the rest of life's ethics.
Posted by: Jackie Danicki | December 05, 2006 at 01:30 PM
Jackie, I am sure my students would prefer this short, sharp and and incisive analysis rather having to listen to me ramble on week after week!
The problem is how to be truthful, how to be transparent... I regularly interview fine, upstanding practitioners who have wildly different views on what is ethical than, say, their own business partners.
Posted by: Philip Young | December 05, 2006 at 05:02 PM