Via Angus Logan (via Leon O'Brien), I saw an article on CIO.com about Podcasting and companies. Specifically, it states the obvious. Podcasting provides the same risks to companies that blogging does. Since anyone can make a podcast, they can also say something harmful about that company.

The same goes for blogging too, although it's probably harder to monitor podcasts. For example, if the CEO of the company I work for wants to monitor my blog for information I might post about the company, he can use Google Alerts (or Technorati, or Pubsub) to monitor key words (I do!). But podcasting is different. Audio isn't searchable (yet - I'm sure that's coming). So how can you find out? Well, most likely, word of mouth, which means if something harmful is said, no one will know about it until it's already made the rounds. In contrast, I usually get the Google Alert the next day after I use a key word on my blog. Do you hire someone to monitor podcasts by employees? What if you're a company of 1000, and just 3% do podcasts. Say twice per week average, at an hour a piece? That's 60 hours of podcasts to wade through. That's a lot.

So what is a company to do? Forbid podcasting? No. The solution is easy. Hire knowledgeable employees!