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If you blog, you need to read this - "The Male Chauvinist Pigs of Irish Air Traffic Control"

Off the usual topic, but relevant to anybody who does this kind of thing. By which I mean write a blog about your interests or business.

Imagine seeing it re-worked and unrecognisably presented to the world in a tabloid newspaper. The following could very well happen to you. It did to @mrs_schregardus .

The piece was written by Luke Byrne under the heading “The Male Chauvinist Pigs of Irish Air Traffic Control” and claims to have discovered how a “Controller’s web diary reveals the sexism and filthy language that are rife in the tower”. In truth it is a simple blog – NOT a diary, with all the sinister undertones that conveys of spying on fellow workers – posted by a young Air Traffic Controller by the name of Melanie Schregardus who jotted a short and humorous little piece some time ago in answer to her online friends who asked what it was like to be an ATC.

Byrne obviously pilfered the blog and has done a fairly amateurish cut-and-paste job which, even to readers of the Mail, is self contradictory and extremely malicious. He quotes her as saying “The arrival of this wave of new (female) controllers caused turmoil among the old guard” and in the next sentence gives her actual comment “Initially older male controllers were bemused”. Byrne writes “She said sexism was institutionalised in the work practice of the tower” (neither she nor her team work in the tower). I studied the blog and could find no such statement – she did joke about one of the older men saying “finally, some eye candy”!

Among the other sensationalist items of plagiarism there’s “She revealed that she endured one of the most pervasive forms of workplace sexism – the filthy language of the ‘boys’ around her”. And goes on to repeat the actual quote from Mrs Schregardus – “The banter between the guys can get quite inappropriate…”

It doesn’t quite live up to his opening paragraph promise that “A woman traffic controller has lifted the lid on the REAL world inside the control tower – a den of male chauvinists who turn the air blue with crude jokes and expect their female colleagues to take on the ‘girlie’ tasks of sending birthday cards and arranging the Christmas party”. The last shock-horror revelation refers to the Schregardus mention of a quid-pro-quo arrangement whereby she, as the only female on her team, looks after the arranging of the annual party and has the whip-around when it’s a mate’s birthday, while the guys watch-out for her and make sure she is treated well wherever she goes. Used to be called chivalry, I seem to remember.

Not surprisingly, she refused to talk to Byrne when he contacted her out of the blue some weeks ago asking for her views of the ATC industrial situation (she recalls being surprised to receive such a call from a stranger, suggesting he was already stalking her via her private blog page), she has never met him, nor has she given him permission to read her blog, let alone misquote from it, nor did she ok the use of her private picture, taken at home, which is not on her site. All of this must raise questions about the privacy of Facebook, Twitter and the other online social meeting places.

And finally there is the devastation caused to a young woman suddenly finding herself occupying a tabloid page and allegedly saying all sorts of things about her employers and about her team members. Even when the dust settles, her chances of career advancement in aviation are negligible – mud really does stick. Ironically she was one of the two controllers who, with the blessing of their union and team members, volunteered to mann their posts in case of emergencies during the recent four-hour stoppage – unpaid and obviously unappreciated for their dedication to duty and to safety.

You can read her response