John Stonborough F.C.I.P.R.

Editors Code online

The Editors’ Code of Practice Committee, which writes and revises the voluntary code of standards overseen by the Press Complaints Commission, has launched its own website: http://www.editorscode.org.uk

A major feature of the site is a digital version of The Editors’ Codebook , the official handbook to the Code, first published in 2004 jointly by the Newspaper Publishers Association, the Newspaper Society, the Periodical Publishers Association, the Scottish Daily Newspaper Society and the Scottish Newspaper Publishers Association.

So it WAS you!

Don’t go ‘off the record’. But if you are prepared to put your career or reputation at risk, take precautions.

Misjudgements can have dire - even terrible - consequences. There’s probably no more tragic example than the off-the record briefing that the weapons scientist, Dr David Kelly, gave to the BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan did his best to keep Kelly’s name secret but, as we know, he failed, and Kelly died. The chairman and chief executive of the BBC also lost their jobs.

But even at a much more humdrum level ask yourself:

1 Is this journalist known to you.
2 Does this journalist need you in future and do you need them.
3 Have you discussed and agreed in advance what is to be off the record. AND …
4 Have you discussed how you are going to be described (attribution).

You will have seen phrases like ‘ a close family friend’  in the papers every day. A ‘family friend’ is either the person themselves or someone with access. A ‘friend’ is often no such thing. A ‘source close to … (the Prince, the White House, the Chairman) is the person themselves or their official spokesman. A Whitehall Insider might be a very senior civil servant etc. How’s this one from the FT this week: “   ….an unamed Permanent Secretary, who is a knight and runs a major depatment” said ….

If you don’t agree the attribution in advance it may only be minutes before you are outed. Have a look at the latest ruling by the PCC (Press Complaints Commission) and you will see what I mean. It made no difference to the unfortunate mortuary worker that he was not quoted or identified, There were only 2 people working there, the other was his boss! Whoops. Having the PCC tick the offending paper off will make not a jot of difference. His ignorance of the way the media work will haunt him for a long time.

Not a Good Morning for Heather

If I was American or some other feisty nationality I would have just asked Sir Paul McCartney’s divorce lawyer Fiona Shackleton what she thought of Heather Mills’ outburst on GMTV. But no, I’m so sort of British, that when I bumped into her and her husband at the Caprice that night, I just mumbled a few inanities.
Pathetic!
So what did you think of Heather’s outburst? I bet you didn’t see it all and what’s more I bet you have an opinion! Just like everybody else. But I’ll tell you something, even if they don’t much like her, I suspect there is more sympathy out there for the way she’s been treated by the press, than people let on.
I hear that Phil Hall, her PR man (he and I started out as reporters on the Dagenham Post together) resigned. What a pity, she needs all the PR advice she can get now. Its not a job for the faint hearted. Colleagues say its PR mission impossible.
Heather needs to belt up for a bit. Paul needs to settle this divorce fast – please God lets have no custody battle with pictures of their daughter being dragged out of her mother’s home. And that certain section of the media might want to reconsider baiting Heather – because once she’s got a few million in the bank, she will go to the European Court.  Hell hath no fury etc…. and they don’t come much more scorned than Heather Mills McCartney.

Thank you Nanny.

I wonder if this will make you chuckle as it did me. The nanny state ‘alive and coughing’, as a mate of mate of mine put it. Bonfire Night Smog Warning. If it does not click through to the Defra website and you get an error message, try pressing F5.

In for a Schilling.

I’d never heard of Peter Serafinowicz but there is a good PR case study about him in Saturday’s Daily Mail: The BBC’s hottest new comedy star Peter Serafinowicz yesterday abandoned an attempt to use the Human Rights Act to stop newspapers revealing his grandfather was the first man in Britain to face a trial for Nazi war crimes.
I have no access to the full facts but I wonder if Peter Serafinowicz feels that trying to gag the Mail, using the privacy provisions of the Human Rights Act, was probably a mistake. It certainly highlights the differences between a legal route and PR, when dealing with negative publicity.
Had he sought my advice, I’d have told him that nobody can be censured for the sins of a dead grandfather, let alone not wanting to talk about it. This is 99.9%  born out by the reader’s comments which accompany the online story.
A short statement to the Daily Mail registering dismay, which I believe he feels, would probably have dealt with it. Instead his lawyers failed to silence the Mail, providing all the justification needed for a smug twist to a hideous allegation and possibly a fat bill too.

BBC Guidelines? Never ‘erd of ‘em!

Dear Diary, Nearly fell off bike at 5.12pm yesterday. Was riding home, half on the pavement as usual, opp Green Park listening to the PM prog and enjoying Eddie Mair’s utterly butterly style, when in walked BBC COO Caroline Thomson. La Topspin had presumably been sent to studio S1 to ‘draw a line under the Fincham resignation’. i.e. Get in and get it over with as quickly as possible, and don’t worry, Eddie isn’t John.
She was doing well in an icy way when EM slipped her a classic Mair Omega 3 capsule question along the lines of:
“would it be a good idea if all broadcasters had to agree to a code of practice on editorial standards?”
Caroline seemed stunned. What follows is slightly abridged or had a Wafflectomy as its known.
“(pause) Um, I think that might be an interesting idea, we do have a sort of code of practice in Ofcom …in that Ofcom would be the appropriate body - Ofcom do have a code of practice that they hold us to … so in a sense it exists already .. but it’s an interesting issue we should look at.”
A word in your shell-like Dear, but the BBC already have 226 pages of advice and mandatory instructions to all BBC staff and contractors, stuffed with things about values, accuracy and lots more besides. Its called the BBC Editorial Guidelines. There is even a link to it on this page.
If you would like to hear the int in full then go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/noscript.shtml?/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/pm, its about 10 mins in. But take care if you are riding a bike.

Website down

My thanks to Mrs DF of Wimborne, Dorset for pointing out that my Air Supremacy website needs updating. Actually, its crashed and is in the garage so to speak. Should be back on the information highway shortly.

Goodbye Anita Roddick

I media trained Anita Roddick. Must be well over ten years ago and we managed to have a row right from the start. I had been called in to gnaw over the issue of animal testing. The Body Shop always claimed they did no animal testing on their products. But of course, these were weasel words. They may not have done any animal testing, but some of the ingredients that make up their products have to have been animal tested by law– or they did then.
The company was uncomfortable with this and needed to work out a defence. So I was summoned to the Body Shop HQ somewhere behind Oxford Street to give Anita a hard time.
Anybody who met Anita Roddick will know that giving Anita a hard time was rash, even when she said, ‘John, I want you to give me a hard time.’ But I did and she bit right back. Nobody was going to attack her integrity, even when the company themselves were paying me to do it..
‘OK old girl’, I thought to myself, pulling a half used bottle of my wife’s Body Shop moisturiser out of my pocket. I’ll get you now!’
‘Right, while I’ve got you here Anita, just explain how you can justify saying this stuff contains 100% natural ingredients and charge (I don’t remember how much) when its actually 70% water?
‘Well, water’s natural isn’t it,’ she replied quick as flash.

Reign on HR Parade

Normally I don’t give a damn, despite the fact that I have met most of players. But on this occasion, it didn’t need the Daily Mail to tell me that a great many people were aghast at the Duchess of Cornwall attending the Princess Diana Memorial on Friday. Until this row, people were getting used to Camilla – about the worst thing anyone’s said is that she is a bit idle. And Prince Charles has seemed much happier since he married her. The End, at last of a ghastly chapter and nothing to think about until the Succession.

And then Clarence House and the Prince set off this Category 5 PR balls up. It wasn’t hate mail they were getting by the sack load, it was post from a shocked populace. How could Camilla possibly attend the memorial – (I don’t think I need to re-hash the circumstances) Yes it was sweet of her husband to want his wife at his side, yes it was sweet of the princes to want to show a kind of family unity by inviting her – though I wonder what they really think. But no it wasn’t sweet or clever of Clarence House even to countenance it for a moment. Saving clients (be they aspirant kings, top politicians or CEO’s) from their own stupidity is a fundamental PR job. Its not easy and I should know. Being an advisor is not a popularity contest and you should be prepared to resign if you truly believe a course of action to be foolhardy, criminal or as in this instance, perverse.

Please, I kept saying to myself, please can Camilla have a diplomatic snuffle, a cough, shingles, anything, on the day and so avoid being there. Better still (and more honest) would be to have issued a short statement saying that it would not be appropriate to attend. The country would have appreciated that and her tenuous popularity enhanced. I am sure all this was discussed endlessly but nobody had the balls to stand up to the Prince himself and say, either she stays home chum, or I leave the job.

Today I read that The Spirit of Wisdom and Good Sense in the shape of our Queen has stepped in. She may not have liked Diana much, but she wasn’t about to allow another hate fest against her eldest son’s second wife – something he seemed quite prepared to allow, perhaps because as he once told me, he never reads the papers. Get reading, Sir.

The truth with a pinch of salt.

That last blog, back in May (I know I know, time just slips by) was very prescient. Who would have believed that the BBC and the other broadcasters would stumble so badly in the weeks since then? Even Blue Peter for Heaven’s sake tried to scam a quiz result and who couldn’t fail to be shocked when somebody doctored a bit of film about the Queen! I hear some old geezers (like me) who worked at the Beeb in the dim distant, chundering on about producers nowadays not coming from a BBC news and current affairs background. But that is no excuse, doctoring the evidence is doctoring the evidence what ever background you come from. It makes you wonder just how much else is fiddled with now that whole programmes are edited on lap tops on the kitchen table. And you know, I find spicing up the truth with a pinch of salt much more serious than pretending that somebody has won a phone-in quiz, when they haven’t. Why?, because that is, often as not, done out of panic as a live show unravels. But to sit in front of a pc and wilfully and maliciously shift the truth a nudge to the left or right with a mouse. That is in a wholly different league.

Do not let them adjust your set.

What with moving offices and travelling I have not had time to write, but have a glance at the May 8 Ofcom adjudication about the nursery school. If you need proof that the BBC doctors their evidence, and what’s more Ofcom sanctioned it - then read page 20. I am always nervous of the ‘end justifies the means’ excuse, especially where we (the viewer) is kept in the dark. In this case the programme makers shifted some dialogue by a few seconds - but we weren’t told. And while I am on the subject, Ofcom seem to have taken the BBC’s word that the original whistleblowers were ‘credible’. I don’t know that they weren’t but I want to be re-assured that the Ofcom Fairness Committee investigated sufficiently to justify the secret filming.  (see page 44 onwards BBC Editorial Guidelines)

What is the German for Schadenfreude?

What is the German for schadenfreude? It’s so integral to our British psyche, we don’t have a word for it. Do the French? Or do they, like us, use the German for want of anything better. Literally it means Harm-Joy, but loses something in translation.

As you and I know, schadenfreude (sound the last letter, so not as in Sigmund) is that gorgeous feeling of self-satisfaction at another’s misfortune. Nothing too serious mind, the British don’t laugh at grief and tragedy - like the MOD’s PR handling of the Navy’s Iran hostage crisis. What we are talking about are life’s little banana skins and surely the big PR banana prize this month (so far) must go to Sir Michael Lyons, newly appointed Chairman of the BBC Trust (£140,000pa).
He is the man who at his first press conference told those Attack Jessies, the Media Correspondents, ‘I probably at the moment sample rather more radio than TV’. And not content in lowering himself straight into their feeding bowls, he compounded it by coming up with three TV programmes he did like (er, had heard of), of which one was on rival ITV and the other on Channel 4. HaHaHaHa!
Don’t get me wrong, my schadenfreude is not directed at his gaff but at the PR people who MUST have been minding him. Did nobody think to ask him before the conference, what his favourite BBC telly progs might be and if he answered Quatermass and the Lone Ranger, then suggest he say. “I watch the News and my wife loves anything with Lenny Henry and Red Nose Day”. Untrue perhaps but a major improvement none the less.
But then I wonder if this is the same lot of advisors who came up with this quote in the official BBC/10 Downing Street release announcing his appointment :
“It is a great privilege to be appointed Chairman of the BBC Trust,” Sir Michael said. “As the BBC’s sovereign body, our duty is to ensure the public who pay for the BBC retain overall control of their BBC. As Chairman I will never lose sight of the public’s core expectations of editorial independence and quality programmes across television, radio and the internet which inform, educate and entertain. I look forward to the exciting challenges of the future and working with my colleagues on the Trust to ensure the BBC provides a quality service to justify the public’s continuing support.” “(Source: BBC press release, London, in English 5 Apr 07).”
He never said any such thing. Some PRat wrote it for him. Sir Michael says things like ‘‘I probably at the moment sample rather more radio than TV. I’m an inveterate supporter of Radio 4. I wake up with the Today programme every morning. I am also a regular listener to Analysis and The Moral Maze.‘
Thank God, the man is an intellectual and not a dumbed down Toscar Winner after all.