Content Matters

In this age of citizen journalism, I'm amazed at the number of public figures who still don't get the fact that what they're saying and doing are being recorded.

While numerous cases of people embarrassing themselves on social nets (such as the Ketchum PR exec calling on Fedex tweeting nasty comments about Memphis), I guess I'm still most amazed at the political leaders who, despite being media savvy, show a total lack of understanding of the Internet and the political blogosphere.

The latest instance came last week with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's response to President Obama's address to the Congress. In explaining why he did not view government as the best solution for our current challenges, he relayed a story of how he and Sheriff Harry Lee during Hurricane Katrina stood up to federal bureaucrats who supposedly prevented volunteers from rescuing stranded storm victims.

Within a day or so, it came out that Governor Jindal was not present during the incident. He inserted himself into an event where he could not possibly have participated. Later, Jindal's staff admitted that the Governor was not there at the time and was relaying a story which he had heard after the fact, but in which he had no direct role.

I don't mean to call out Jindal here. He's clearly not the only one who's done this (remember Hillary "dodging bullets" in Tuzla?) but his story is so easily proven false that it makes no sense. Governor Jindal has, at age 37, already accomplished more than most of us will accomplish in a lifetime, so there's no need to pad his experience.

In a seemingly unrelated story last week, the blogosphere (twittersphere?) was abuzz with (mock) outrage over the changes to the Facebook terms and conditions, allowing Facebook to continue to use your content even after you leave the service. Imagine that - information that you post to a public web site might remain there even if you decide you'd like to erase it.

Is anyone really surprised at that? A current Google search for my name brings up more than 13,000 pages. That information is out there and there's no way to remove it. It's not just the information you put up - when friends tag you in photos or mention you on their pages, your information is out there.

So, whether you're a politician, a professional athlete or just an ordinary worker bee or a student applying to college, your words and actions are being captured. And if there's one thing that the citizen journalists have proven (especially when it comes to political matters), it's that they will dig through the archives to find those incriminating videos.