Remember the digital paper trail

• March 22, 2010

By Linda Forrest

This past week, the news was filled with stories about people behaving badly and reminders that electronic communications leave a digital paper trail a mile long.

Personally, I feel so badly for Sandra Bullock being humiliated as she was by her philandering jerk of a spouse, having recently pronounced in front of the world and Barbara Walters how he “has her back.” Well, he had someone else’s front, it seems. And she was happy to spill all her beans and text messages to the highest bidder.

Tiger Woods, whose shoddy attempts at reconciliation with his audience through the media have been ripped apart by PR experts, has just hired a renowned sports crisis communications expert to help him crawl out from under the recent release of his disgusting text messages to a porn star with whom he had dalliances.

The trustworthiness of tattoo covered strippers and porn stars really took a hit this week…

The chair of the Toronto Transit Commission, having already dropped out of that city’s mayoral race because of his affair, has now been discovered to have charged the city of Toronto for a cab ride he took to meet his mistress. Torontonians, already demanding his resignation as head of the beleaguered TTC, are now even more riled up.

While these particular individuals behaving badly have made many egregious personal decisions, it’s astounding to think that it never occurred to them that their text messages and receipts wouldn’t come back to haunt them. In this digital era, almost everything we do is recorded, logged and accessible to refer back to, especially emails, texts, blog posts, Tweets… More than once, this has been advantageous to me when a client or a reporter claims, “I never said that” or, “I never approved that” and I have the email to refer back to. (Thank heavens I’m an electronic packrat!) This can, as we’ve seen this week, work against you if you’ve got something to hide or if you’re trying to cheat the system in some way.

First, don’t be a jerk. Straighten up and fly right; if your moral compass is way off (personally or professionally) you’re bound to get caught sooner or later. Recognize the immeasurable damage that will be done to your brand, your professional standing, your employer and employees, and others if you make terrible decisions and get caught red-handed. Is it worth it? Really?

Second, don’t put anything in writing you wouldn’t stand behind later on. There have been plenty of misguided, poorly conceived reactionary news releases or statements made by executives that have haunted them for years. Don’t be that guy or gal.