On January 13th, the Prime Minister’s Special Advisor, Damian McBride, emailed Derek Draper, who runs a Labour-supporting political blog. The email discussed setting up a Red Rag, an ‘attack blog’ which would publish unfounded gossip about their Conservative opponents. In April, the content of McBride’s email was leaked to the right-wing Guido Fawkes blog. The email and subsequent others were published on the website and the rest, as they say, is history.

McBride’s behaviour was unethical and a ‘clear and serious breach’ of Whitehall rules. Sir Gus O’Donnell, the head of the Civil Service, has since announced that advisers who spread ‘inappropriate material’ will be automatically sacked under a new code of conduct.

Coincidentally, at the same time as ‘smear-gate’ was dominating the news, research was published by the University of Southern California. It revealed that today’s fast-paced media culture is damaging moral decision-making. Commenting on their findings, one of the research team noted that, “For some kinds of thought, especially moral decision-making about other people’s social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and reflection”.

I’m not blaming McBride’s actions on the Internet, but I do wonder whether 24-hour news, blogs, email and social networks such as Twitter are helping to create a culture where it is easier to slip beyond what is either civil or ethical. We’ve probably all sent emails that we have later regretted, but that’s even more likely to be the case for politicos. The pressure on them to be ahead of the news agenda, make a big splash and generate web hits is immense, especially when your boss’ poll ratings are plummeting, as Gordon Brown’s were in January.

I’m told that a few years ago, digital giant Microsoft encouraged its employees to email less and talk more face-to-face. It was good advice. If Damian McBride had followed it, he just might still be working at Number 10.

This article first appeared in Christianity Magazine in June 2009.