Filkin report: Police warned

[Guest]

The "close relationship" between parts of Scotland Yard and the media has caused "serious harm", a report by Dame Elizabeth Filkin says.

Information had previously been given "inappropriately" and this had "compromised" the way police and the media scrutinised each other's activities, it added.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16411329

Speaking at the launch of the report, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe said new rules for officers and their relationship with journalists will be implemented.

Let's hope that this can become a reality - but we still need to get to the bottom of wrong-doing in the Police/Press complex and punish the wrong-doers

[french frank]

An interesting link here with the other story about the number of police officers warned over their Facebook accounts, in that both deal with the informal/social behaviour of the police. Filkins warned particularly of the inadvertent, unintentionally inappropriate revelations, not merely criminal collusion as in the news hacking affair.

Similarly, teachers were also warned by the GTC about the use of Facebook and Twitter. You have to be very naive not to appreciate how much you can damage yourself, and the way you're viewed, as well as your profession, by what you post under your own name.