So my friend, hereafter called {name removed}, just called to ask me to remove her name and her comments from my Tried To Kill Me post – so that she could keep her job.
It seems someone at {name removed} found my blog entry and forwarded it to the CEO, who fired {name removed} for having posted sympathetic comments on it. She’d been dooced by proxy! But then they un-fired her, and she called me up. She mentioned that they also want me to remove the hospital’s name from my blog, but I said no. Not yet, any way. I mean, if you google the hospital’s name, my post doesn’t even show up on the first page… it’s under links to hospitals of the same name in other states.
I mean, here’s the deal. I went to a hospital for care, I received bad care, and then bitched about it on my blog – just as I would about crappy food in a restaurant or a bad mechanic. My language is harsh, yes, but that’s how I talk. Can they really force me to remove their name? Isn’t this some order of free speech? I’m certainly not lying, so it’s not slander.
I’m off to call Wally to let him know that {local hospital} is going to try to make me remove their name from my blog. Ugh. Oh, well – the post will still be relevant even if I replace “{name removed}” with “shitty local hospital”. Snark.
Oh, if you want to see the original version, it’s cached by Google (and no, there’s nothing I can do about that).
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Edited 4:55 PM: I went back and removed three instances of the hospital in question’s full name from my original post. I mean, no reason but ego prompted me to tell {name removed} that “they couldn’t make me do that.”
The point of blogging – for me, at any rate – is to express my experiences and get feedback from friends. It’s not like I’m crusading to save others from going there or something. Nothing I can say on the web will impact the local community’s perceptions of the hospital in question’s care standards either way, but my post showing up on a borderless Internet search does have a broad perceived impact on their… their… whatever. Their brand name, I guess. So. I removed it in favor of initials.
*hurumph*
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Wow I just read your original post for the first time. You went through quite an ordeal! The utter incompetency of that hospital shocks me! I am so sorry for you. I’ve had many different doctors in my short 22 years and so I can sympathize. I have had a lot of good ones and a few bad. If only there was a good system to weed out all the bad ones from being excepted into medical school.
Oh for the luvva dog. What frikkin’ bullshit, Mush. If I knew who the doc was, I’d go to JCH and bitchslap that idiot… then go do the same to the hospital administrator for being such a big bully. Shitty local hospital is right.
oy – no truly free speech, eh?
Yeah, {name removed} was under the impression they’d sue me to remove my blog post. I told our lawyer and he said, “I’m no first amendment expert, but I’m pretty sure you can have an opinion, even on a blog.”
Brett’s of the opinion I should put the hospital’s full name back on the post until they serve me… but he’s belligerent. Snort!
Ehh…you talk to Buzz since 4PM? You might be surprised…
I’m not surprized, exactly. But I am pissed off. They didn’t even try to contact me directly to ask me if I’d comply, they went straight to the lawyers!