In this week’s bulletin, Charlie looks at different news platforms and gives his experience of comments left on LinkedIn for recent D-Day tributes.

To date, I have contentiously avoided getting TikTok on my phone. Not for any moral reason, but as my youngest daughter Phoebe said, “Daddy, you will enjoy it too much.”. I can lose the odd hour on the Facebook version and I understand TikTok is even better at sussing you out and the algorithm gives you exactly what you like to listen to. I am very old skool when it comes to news and where I find my opinions from. I work on the principle that if a news item, event, or conspiracy is not reported on the BBC News website, Radio 4, The Times, or The Economist, then it is very likely to be true. Although I am well aware these sources, on the whole, give a right-of-centre view, you can at least get a fact-based view, and I can make my mind up on that.

As you will have seen yesterday, LinkedIn was filled with tributes to D-Day veterans and salutes to the fallen. I came across a post talking about D-Day but it was a post from Ex-MilitaryCareers.com which used the pride flag as their organisation’s image. There were a lot of very angry people denouncing using the flag in connection with a D-Day and military event. I usually avoid commenting on anything involving the culture wars as people don’t listen and it just ends up as a slanging match with no winners. My blood was up by the comments, and I waded in with a slightly pompous comment: “Reading the posts, I see a certain irony. Those who fought and died at D-Day fought so that we, the next generation, could have freedom of thought, expression and opinion, and some of the comments criticise someone who decides to represent themselves in a certain way….. Let’s bring the conversation back to what they did for us and celebrate, but for their sacrifice, we won’t be able to have this conversation………..”.

So far on this one, I only had a couple of comments but was slightly taken aback by this one: “Charlie Maclean-Bristol FBCI FEPS MCIPR so, you support the chemical castration of children? The experimenting on mentally ill children in the name of pride and being your authentic self. Yeah, you know who else experimented on mentally ill children? The Nazis.”. I thought the pride flag celebrated the LGBT community rather than supporting some of the more controversial aspects of trans issues. Obviously for others, they see it as something completely different and flying this flag is point-making rather than celebratory. I suspect if you are anti-something, then the algorithms will keep feeding you further ‘facts’ and ‘news items’ which reinforce this view and make you more angry.

I see it as the role of the business continuity manager to understand what is happening in the world and to keep a close eye on any local or international events which could have an impact on their organisation, both in the short-term and also to identify longer-term trends as well. Using a good source of varied and authoritative views is important to get the breadth of opinion and see events from different angles.