Finding the right analogy to describe Cricket Australia’s latest public relations disaster is a little difficult.
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It’s a little like shouldering arms and getting clean bowled - but not quite. Perhaps it’s more like bowling repeated no balls after you’ve been warned.
To be fair, a poor analogy risks trivialising a serious situation with some very personal topics that generate emotive discussion.
Cricket Tasmania’s Angela Williamson was sacked from her job in government relations because she used social media to criticise the government’s abortion services.
Just what is private comment, what is public but a fair expression of opinion and what breaches workplace policies? It’s a tangled interweb indeed.
- Mark Baker
More disturbing is the allegation that a senior member of government disclosed to her employer that she had had an abortion - an extraordinary and inexcusable event, if true. The government denies this or any other involvement and says human resource matters are for Cricket Tasmania.
Ms Williamson has taken her employer to the Fair Work Commission arguing it was wrong to sack her for expressing personal political opinions.
Cricket Australia will argue her criticism of the government made her government relations role untenable.
I don’t want to delve into those arguments specifically given they are now before the commission. But it has the potential to set an interesting precedent.
Just what is private comment, what is public but a fair expression of opinion and what breaches workplace policies?
Social media policies have opened up a world of pain and discomfort for employees and employers.
The ubiquity of the platforms means we no longer share private thoughts with confidantes, but with all and sundry.
No longer are they verbalised in a small group and quickly forgotten, but consigned to the digital draft of history for all time.
Compounding how readily available the comments are, is who they’re available to.
Most people are not aware of who they are broadcasting to when they make statements, thinking it is only family and friends.
But with resharing and screen capturing, you might as well be shouting them down the street at the top of your lungs – you’d reach fewer people.
One should be careful of what you complain about even if it’s not going to get you sacked because of the impact it can have on your work relationships.
Your colleagues - most of whom will like and are proud of where they work - will see it and probably be annoyed not sympathetic.
In fact, in can really backfire as colleagues think, ‘Did you see so and so having a whinge? Can you believe that? They’re the worst for such and such’.
I cringe at some of the statements made in the early days of social media. Not because they were crude or defamatory or career damaging but because they made me look like an idiot.
Then there are the photos and I’m not talking just about the embarrassing ones with your eyes closed.
It is called social media because most of it involves recording our social life.
And that mostly involves time spent “socialising”, ie, drinking alcohol.
These comments and pictures will exist in the digital ether for eternity.
The digital footprint is cast in cement.
Just ask Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn who was sacked from the third film because of tweets he made in 2009.
The comments were in poor taste; an attempt at provocative humour that Gunn apologised for several times.
“My words of nearly a decade ago were, at the time, totally failed and unfortunate efforts to be provocative,” Gunn said.
“I have regretted them for many years since — not just because they were stupid, not at all funny, wildly insensitive, and certainly not provocative like I had hoped, but also because they don’t reflect the person I am today or have been for some time.”
But it didn’t save him when someone who disagreed with his views, reshared the comments and a petition to get him sacked.
Ms Williamson’s case is interesting because she argues she has been sacked for opinions she has.
Gunn’s is perhaps more interesting because he was sacked for opinions he once had (or more accurately comments he once made) that he no longer holds.
It’s a tangled interweb indeed.
- Mark Baker is Fairfax Tasmania managing editor