Peter Andre: Nice Bloke But Caught Up In Can’t Do PR

January 28, 2010

map_of_jordan

How will CAN Associates spin itself out of the disastrous PR flowing from the company’s recent handling of a Peter Andre interview?

CAN has been in the business of celebrity PR for some time, but the company finds itself on the wrong end of the Mirror’s 3.00am team after foisting a series of ludicrous demands on them for a five minute interview with the estimable Mr Andre. The Guardian tells us that, in connection with Andre’s new role as ambassador for Costa Coffee, CAN’s demands included: only interviewing Andre about Costa Coffee, not asking any questions regarding anything else, giving CAN Associates full copy and headline approval and not running any Katie Price (aka, Jordan) pictures in the article.

As if all that’s not bad enough, CAN also stipulated that “3am online, under all circumstances, must accompany the photographs of Peter Andre with positive text/captions/headings”.

In response to this, 3am commendably decided not to play ball. In fact, they went public, venting their spleen in glorious fashion, condemning CAN to the world at large for being “notoriously controlling” and behaving in a way that was “nothing short of ridiculous”.

The result of CAN’s stance is thus as follows:

1. Peter Andre, a likeable chap, did not get the PR plug he would have liked;

2. Costa Coffee, a quite nice product, did not get the PR plug it would have liked;

3. Both are made to look foolish, either in instructing CAN to impose so absurd a series of demands or acquiescing in their suggestion that they were appropriate;

4. CAN look like a can’t do PR company with little or no conception of how the media works.

The moral is that common courtesy goes a long way. Bullying does not. Good on the 3am team for taking a stand – and for CAN for providing a textbook example of how not to do PR.

Pictured courtesy of Lonely Planet: a map of Jordan. We believe that this image is acceptable in connection with anything to do with Peter Andre.

 

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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.