I assume most everyone heard about the Catholic school that banned blogging. It turns out that the story was greatly sensationalized, and Dawn Eden has flushed it out. Here's an excerpt from her site. It looks like things are a little heated.
I believe it was irresponsible and misleading of the Daily Record to put a screaming headline on its front page about a "blogging ban" when the school was only banning MySpace.com-style profiles where students put personal information, blogged about classmates, or blogged about the school itself. That last rule is unfortunate, but it's in the school handbook, so the enforcement of it at the private school should have been no surprise to parents.
Most irresponsible was the Record's not finding the space within the lengthy article to note that the school's diocese actually encourages blogging, as I write in my column. Instead, the reporter got the experts to go on about how the kids' free speech was being limited–as though they were being denied the opportunity to blog at all. It's like writing, "School bans chocolate," and then you read the front print and find that it only bans chocolate-covered ants.
The Daily Record knew of my impending column after I called them for comment, and they already have a pre-emptive strike up today: an article simultaneously damning the "ban" and blaming the school for not protecting students. Not only that, the article claims that the school only allows blogs it can "control." Oooh, scary–and not what the school's rule book says, according to what the diocese told me.
Link.
