Friday 6 November 2009
Thursday 3 September 2009
Sissons and Harvey to Dine on the Beeb
Isn't it a perilous thing, this messing with the BBC? As soon as the boot goes in from Murdoch – James the younger – up pops Peston, ranting, swearing, fighting for Auntie, as he did during that contretemps in Edinburgh last week. All of which has been carefully noted by the bods who have hired veteran newsreader Peter Sissons to review his time at the Beeb for the Media Society in London on 30 September. Since leaving, Sissons – who was castigated for wearing an insufficiently sombre tie while announcing the Queen Mother's death (burgundy, not black. I mean, really!) – has attacked the BBC for falling standards, ageism, surrender to political correctness, cowardice … the charge list is endless. And he only retired in June. Helping him share the happy memories will be Andrew Harvey, another newly departed BBC person, whose tenure at the internal magazine Ariel saw it shift from Pravda-style cheer sheet to voice of the disgruntled. Even loyal Pesto might struggle to shut them both up. Still, if anyone can, it's him.
JOHN MAIR
JOHN MAIR
Thursday 9 July 2009
Wednesday 10 June 2009
Thursday 21 May 2009
Hacks and Flacks Panellists Deem Divorce Impossible
Truth-telling can be a severely painful enterprise. Especially for those who weave their webs in the spidery world of journalism and public relations.
Easily mistaken as a duel to determine who can say the least using the most adjectives, Monday’s twin-hosted CIPR / Media Society Hacks vs. Flacks panel debate at the Foreign Press Association was a clash full of painful truths.
Those expecting a polite reconciliation between two not too dissimilar cousins were instead treated to an unrestrained domestic squabble more evocative of a Friz Freleng West Virginia backcountry.
Chair Sue MacGregor, formerly of Radio 4’s Today Programme, charged the panel of hacks – ex-BBC arts correspondent Rosie Millard, founding media editor of the Independent Maggie Brown, and former editor of the Daily Mirror / present blogging maestro Roy Greenslade – and flacks – Peter Luff MP, CIPR President Kevin Taylor, and PR supplier to the Boris Johnson mayoral campaign Jo Tanner - with a simple question: is a marriage between hacks and flacks possible?
To encourage audience participation, the PR leaning crowd, thanks to the organising efforts of the CIPR's Cherry Chapell, were first treated to an on the spot referendum.
“Who,” MacGregor asked, “do you trust more?”
With the result leaning in their favour, the flacks, industry slang for PR people, began the more accommodating side. Any reasonable journalist was welcome into their marital bed, they reasoned, as long as they took off their dirty shoes and played by house rules.
Peter Luff MP, the most combative of the three, was so conciliatory that he would even “marry the good ones,” an exception that proved all too true.
“I even married a journalist,” he finished.
The hacks started the aggressors. Within seconds Rosie Millard of the Sunday Times Review fanned the teeming flames of discontent. The fundamental disagreement revolved around the question of truth.
“They absolutely destroy any attempt for the journalist to get at the truth of the situation,” Millard remonstrated.
Not only do flacks construct Boris Johnson-sized impediments to the bottom line, she suggested, they further complicate the journalist’s role as public protector, turning the search for truth into a perpetual staging of Angel’s and Demon’s.
Facing increased protestations, the flacks brandished their most deflective PR techniques, remaining Obama cool while the hacks flailed about in indignation. Such was their power in their various Alec Guinness does Derren Brown disguises that every wave of the hand and deferent nod seemed to lull the crowd into abeyance.
Their measured approach did not last long.
“A journalist tell the truth?” Luff guffawed, “what journalist ever got sacked for getting something wrong? A good PR let’s the essential truth speak.” After all, both sides represented aggregations of separate but equal interests. While journalists claimed to represent that most amorphous of clients, the public, PRs spoke for real organizations. And for every citizen deceived by corporate fraud or political malfeasance, there is a well-run company wronged by bad press.
“There is no moral equivalence,” Greenslade bristled in response, “the journalist’s mission is to tell the truth. We take enormous personal risks in our attempt to tell the greater truth for the benefit of society.”
“This is the number of journalists killed in the past year,” he continued pointing to a triple digit number scrawled on a piece of paper.
“This,” he finished holding a blank page, “is the number of PR killed in their reporting of the narrower truth.”
With no resolution in sight, it was left to audience member, Phil Harding, a former editor and executive at the BBC, to reveal the most sober of the evening’s truths.
There would be no wedding bells, idyllic love, or unyielding fidelity, he argued. This relationship is destined to be a marriage of traditional circumstance. With the PR companies playing the role of the powerful husband, it was left to the journalists to figure out how to exert as much influence and independence as possible within the strictures of the present arrangement.
Faced with the prospects of such an implacable marriage, a more appropriate question may have been,
Is a divorce possible?
Ryan Mahan
Easily mistaken as a duel to determine who can say the least using the most adjectives, Monday’s twin-hosted CIPR / Media Society Hacks vs. Flacks panel debate at the Foreign Press Association was a clash full of painful truths.
Those expecting a polite reconciliation between two not too dissimilar cousins were instead treated to an unrestrained domestic squabble more evocative of a Friz Freleng West Virginia backcountry.
Chair Sue MacGregor, formerly of Radio 4’s Today Programme, charged the panel of hacks – ex-BBC arts correspondent Rosie Millard, founding media editor of the Independent Maggie Brown, and former editor of the Daily Mirror / present blogging maestro Roy Greenslade – and flacks – Peter Luff MP, CIPR President Kevin Taylor, and PR supplier to the Boris Johnson mayoral campaign Jo Tanner - with a simple question: is a marriage between hacks and flacks possible?
To encourage audience participation, the PR leaning crowd, thanks to the organising efforts of the CIPR's Cherry Chapell, were first treated to an on the spot referendum.
“Who,” MacGregor asked, “do you trust more?”
With the result leaning in their favour, the flacks, industry slang for PR people, began the more accommodating side. Any reasonable journalist was welcome into their marital bed, they reasoned, as long as they took off their dirty shoes and played by house rules.
Peter Luff MP, the most combative of the three, was so conciliatory that he would even “marry the good ones,” an exception that proved all too true.
“I even married a journalist,” he finished.
The hacks started the aggressors. Within seconds Rosie Millard of the Sunday Times Review fanned the teeming flames of discontent. The fundamental disagreement revolved around the question of truth.
“They absolutely destroy any attempt for the journalist to get at the truth of the situation,” Millard remonstrated.
Not only do flacks construct Boris Johnson-sized impediments to the bottom line, she suggested, they further complicate the journalist’s role as public protector, turning the search for truth into a perpetual staging of Angel’s and Demon’s.
Facing increased protestations, the flacks brandished their most deflective PR techniques, remaining Obama cool while the hacks flailed about in indignation. Such was their power in their various Alec Guinness does Derren Brown disguises that every wave of the hand and deferent nod seemed to lull the crowd into abeyance.
Their measured approach did not last long.
“A journalist tell the truth?” Luff guffawed, “what journalist ever got sacked for getting something wrong? A good PR let’s the essential truth speak.” After all, both sides represented aggregations of separate but equal interests. While journalists claimed to represent that most amorphous of clients, the public, PRs spoke for real organizations. And for every citizen deceived by corporate fraud or political malfeasance, there is a well-run company wronged by bad press.
“There is no moral equivalence,” Greenslade bristled in response, “the journalist’s mission is to tell the truth. We take enormous personal risks in our attempt to tell the greater truth for the benefit of society.”
“This is the number of journalists killed in the past year,” he continued pointing to a triple digit number scrawled on a piece of paper.
“This,” he finished holding a blank page, “is the number of PR killed in their reporting of the narrower truth.”
With no resolution in sight, it was left to audience member, Phil Harding, a former editor and executive at the BBC, to reveal the most sober of the evening’s truths.
There would be no wedding bells, idyllic love, or unyielding fidelity, he argued. This relationship is destined to be a marriage of traditional circumstance. With the PR companies playing the role of the powerful husband, it was left to the journalists to figure out how to exert as much influence and independence as possible within the strictures of the present arrangement.
Faced with the prospects of such an implacable marriage, a more appropriate question may have been,
Is a divorce possible?
Ryan Mahan
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