Public Relations = Corporate Lies?

Another posting inspired by a recent article in the Independent and also partly by the comedian Robert Newman. There are two points that piqued my interest, one is that large corporations who spend a lot of money on advertising would appear to carry or certainly try to have a large amount of influence on editorial policy in publications where they place their adverts. This i would imagine won't come as a great suprise to many but that doesn't make it any less insidious. The second thing that caught my attention, i don't think is something the public is quite so likely to be aware of and that is fake news.

I'll start with the latter point as i'm sure you might well be thinking to yourself what is fake news? It is simply put a promotional package made to look like a news report, with the benefit to the producer of the item of putting their spin or message across unedited or troubled by any journalistic interpretation. Like pre packaged frozen meals i'm sure this isn't good for anyone but the people making money off them. The example in the Independents article was a promotional package for the Mel Gibson movie The Passion of the Christ, this might not seem the most worrying example it's only a film and whats the harm in advertising your film? Maybe not a great deal but it included a CD with the star of the film Jim Caviezel answering questions that were also provided on a sheet of paper for local reporters to edit in to give the appearance of a personal interview. Given the controversial nature of the film i suspect this perhaps allowed them the ability to steer clear of any difficult questions.

Getting back to the first point, not so much the power of advertising but the power of advertisers. If you are spending millions of dollars on advertising your product/slash company then the threat of withdrawing your adverts can be a very serious one for newspaper and magazine producers as well as TV networks. The majority of which rely on the proceeds from running adverts to produce their publications. Recently a memo released on behalf of BP describing their new policy stated that newspapers and magazines wishing to run editorial about their sector either good or bad should not do so without both a) informing them and b) agreeing to withdraw BP adverts. It certainly doesn't reflect well on BP if they fear journalistic interest to such an extreme extent.

It should be noted that this memo didn't come from BP direct, it came via a PR company, "WPP media buying company Mindshare," according to the Independent article. But there was more, BP are far from the only people to hire PR people to improve their public relations. The government of Uganda has just hired Hill & Knowlton to improve their image. Although it was put far better within the original article, "The London office of the PR giant Hill & Knowlton has just signed a £400,000 contract 'to improve Uganda's stained reputation as a human-rights abuser and democracy laggard'." To think that the great man Bill Hicks suggested that people who work in marketing or advertising should kill themselves, what could ever have given him such a poor opinion of the profession?

Quick edit, i should probably add that the orginal article was by a gent named Mark Borkowski, good article my man!