Cory Doctorow: Jesse sez, “The official Canadian Broadcasting Corporation blog (‘Inside The CBC’) has a story about a new CBC document that suggest CBC employees must seek permission from their superiors to create AND maintain blogs in which they are identifiable as CBC employees.” This is a jaw-dropping policy for a public service news agency to develop — requiring its employees to get permission to express their personal views is absolutely beyond the pale, especially for an institution nominally about freedom of expression. The policy applies to all CBC employees — including janitors, and prohibits them from advocating for any group or cause, or expressing partisan opinions. I think you have to really squint at the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — and Canadian labor law — to make this legal. For starters, it can’t possibly be legal to prohibit unionized CBC employees from advocating for their union.

To be clear, this policy applies only to personal blogs where the author identifies themselves as a CBC employee. But if you’re writing a truly transparent, personal blog, sometimes you want to talk about what your job is. It’s part of who we are. But now, if you do that, you apparently fall within the scope of this document.

Link (Thanks, Jesse!)

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CBC bans employee blogging without permission – no politics or causes allowed