The perils of blogging: it’s rather hard to delete what you wrote
Written by Mark Pack on 27th November 2007 – 11:01 amFrom the Sunday Herald:
SCOTTISH LABOUR’S new spin-doctor made a series of damning criticisms of his colleagues weeks before he accepted the job as the party’s head of communications. Gavin Yates used his blog to describe Wendy Alexander as “abrasive”, labelled shadow health minister Andy Kerr as “simply uninspiring”, and blasted Jack McConnell for being a “lame duck leader” when in office…
His comments featured on his WordPress-hosted blog, GYmedia. A message on the blog page now states: “The authors have deleted this blog. The content is no longer available.”
But the Sunday Herald has uncovered a number of Yates’s postings, many of which portray the Labour leadership in a negative light.
The full piece then goes on to quote many of these postings.
Hat tip: doctorvee, who also explains some of the ways your old blog postings hang around on the internet.
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27th November 2007 at 12:06 pm
Yes, but …
Gavin Yates’s SCVO blog was actually a media summary of what other news had been reporting over the previous fortnight. So when he was describing his new boss, Wendy Alexander, as abrasive, or his new nemesis, Alex Salmond, as impressive, he was simply quoting other coverage in the Scottish press. But never let the truth etc. etc.
27th November 2007 at 1:44 pm
It will probably make him better at his job. Press Officers need to be honest and challenging to ensure public positions are robust.
27th November 2007 at 1:50 pm
The blog in question had nothing to do with the SCVO (as far as I know) and if he was quoting other press coverage he had a funny way of going about it. No quotation marks, no blockquote tags, no attributions and no links!
Here, for instance, is the full paragraph where he described Wendy Alexander as abrasive.
And here is Alex Salmond on the top of his game: