Bankers in PR Masterplan to Court Public Opinion

November 26, 2009

Banker 1

The scene: early morning in an office in the inner sanctum of a major bank. Gathered at an antique oak table worth £7.2m are the bank’s CEO, its lawyer and PR executive.

CEO: Hurray! Common sense has prevailed. The Supreme Court proves that we rule supreme. We can charge what we like and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Lawyer: The Supreme Court’s ruling in our long-running battle against miscreant money-grabbing consumers is indeed a fillip.

PR Exec: I agree. However, we must be careful how we handle this. The public don’t like us at the moment and we don’t want our stock to sink any lower.

CEO: What do you mean, they don’t like us?

Lawyer: Yes, what do you mean? I like to think that I’m in touch with the pulse of public feeling but that’s the first I’ve heard of such a sentiment. Please explain.

PR Exec: Well, the public think that we’re fat cats whose gravy train continues undiluted by the recession, which is unfair because we caused it in the first place – by engaging in ludicrously risky hedge fund trading and awarding ourselves massive bonuses for achieving nothing but the country’s ruin – and they’re all the more upset by the Walker Report.

CEO: My word, do they really think that?

PR Exec: I’m afraid so.

Lawyer: Extraordinary. Are they not grateful for the money we lend them? And what’s the Walker Report?

PR Exec: They should be grateful, of course. I think that’s what Walker must have concluded because instead of condemning our monopolistic oligarchial practices and poor standards of corporate governance, as many expected, he says we’re OK really and, better yet, that nothing must be done to drive us abroad.

CEO: Why would we want to go abroad in the first place? Granted, it’s always nice to get away to the villas but if he thinks we might go and work overseas he must be mad!

Lawyer: Quite so. The money’s just not there. And the rules and regulations would drive anyone round the bend.

PR Exec: Well, that’s what he must have decided because his report changes nothing. Indeed, allied with the Supreme Court’s ruling against the consumers who said our overdraft charges were unfair and unreasonable we certainly have cause for good cheer.

CEO: Excellent news. Let’s crack open the champagne.

A pause while a butler enters the room and opens a bottle of Louis Roederer Cristal Rose 1995, the bankers’ breakfast tipple of choice. They clink glasses and, for a moment, quietly reflect on their good fortune, one aptly enhanced by a Titian hanging on the wall.

PR Exec (coughing): But gentlemen, we do need to keep an eye on public opinion. As I say, bizarre though it may be our stock has never been lower.

CEO: What do you recommend?

PR Exec: We must devise a subtle and nuanced PR strategy to persuade the public that we are angels.

CEO: Do you have any ideas?

PR Exec: Yes. Let’s hold a raffle giving the winner an afternoon in a corporate box at Chelsea football club. It’s where all the rich people go to eat prawn sandwiches and watch Jose Mourinho’s team as they vanquish all. It’ll be a real vote-winner.

CEO: Won’t that be expensive?

Lawyer: Not if we utilise cunning legal jargon in the small print to the effect that the precise date on which the prawn sandwiches can be eaten is uncertain. That way we can take the winner there on a day when there’s no football.

CEO: Brilliant. Draft the jargon and start the campaign. Good work.

PR Exec: Thank you, Excellency. There’s just one thing…

CEO: Yes?

Lawyer: The small but not inconsiderable matter of our bonuses.

CEO: How could I forget! Forgive me. Give yourselves £3.75m each.

They leave, laughing all the way to the bank while outside on the streets of London, public opinion awaits its mollification. The image of a renegade banker (or is it a member of the public?) is courtesy of Flickr user jameshill.

 

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Good work by Rusbridger

February 10, 2012
scissors

The headline says it all: ‘Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger takes pay cut‘.

Dan Sabbagh’s piece says a bit more: said editor ‘emailed staff at the newspaper to say that his salary in the upcoming 2012-13 financial year will be £395,010, compared with £438,900 in the current financial year’.

Some voices say: ‘How worthy.’

Others opine: ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’

But we say: good work by Mr Rusbridger. For the sake of the media’s survival, we hope that others in senior positions in the industry will follow suit.

Image of toolkit allegedly deployed by Alan Rusbridger courtesy of Flickr user LollyKnit.

From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.