An appetite for blogging

Like most of the UK this week, my thoughts have turned to issues of privacy or the lack thereof. The revelations of the widespread use of phone tapping to uncover “newsworthy” stories at the News of the World seems to have rocked the establishment and shocked the public.

Really?

Was anyone really surprised at this?

Surely we must have known that it was possible, and if it was possible, then likely that a media focused on sensationalism and being first to report the lascivious or deeply personal, no matter what the ethical questions, would take advantage of opportunities as they arise. That it has taken 10 years to report these acts is at least a curiosity that no one seems to have questioned. Nowhere in the self – righteous rants has a single politician asked how it is possible that no one put two and two together and wondered where all of these “inside stories” were coming from.

Are there codes of behaviour in journalism, I wonder? Those things you just don’t do because they are wrong?

In business, as in life, there have historically been things that good and honest people simply do not do. Steal, bribe, lie, threaten, extort, etc. Increasingly, and perhaps because moral codes seem to have slipped a bit or various cultures hold different ideas of right and wrong, governments are legislating to help to guide us in our moral decision-making. The new bribery act is just one example of regulators telling us what we really know we should or shouldn’t do- although I smiled as one civil servant declined a cheese sandwich at a lunchtime meeting at our office in fear that this could be misconstrued as a bribe while we were in the middle of a tender process. Perhaps – it was a very nice prêt a manger sandwich, after all.

But back to privacy. At a recent CEO breakfast I attended, one leader of a major UK organisation simply and fatalistically commented that there is no such thing as privacy so we should all just get over it.

Maybe. But just because we can do something, should we?

Despite being able to track, listen or watch each other, should we not adhere to some value system or ethical code? I was taught not to open another persons post (remember that), or enter a room without knocking or listen in on a telephone extension. And I still can’t do these things.

Once again, we are being called on to make judgements based on values and not simply do something because we have the power or the ability to. Of course these are not always black and white decisions, but then values always lie somewhere in the middle – that is why they require judgement.

To end on a personal anecdote, I was shocked to discover that two mothers of gap year students travelling with my daughter were daily “tracking” where their children were via their mobile phones. Amusingly, this backfired slightly when both girls were “lost” at different ends of Argentina leading to near-panic for the worried mothers until I suggested that perhaps they simply turned off their phones at different times. Thankfully, they were “found” to have done just that.