mediations

It's an honour, Boris

Is this man.....

A. A buffoon pretending to be a politician?

B. A politician pretending to be a buffoon?

C. One of the great communicators of our age, deserving of the CIPR President's Medal?

Some people will go for A, some for B.

But outgoing CIPR President Lionel Zetter is showing remarkable originality with his choice.

 

Chocs away for hero pilot....

One of the essay topics I set my Media Ethics students was:

Find a (newspaper) article... that features a  member of the public who has not sought the media spotlight and examine the ethical arguments for and against exposing their action, character and personal circumstances to wider scrutiny.

On Wednesday Peter Burkhill was just another airline pilot.

On Thursday he was the hero who saved the lives of 136 passengers and 16 crew when the engines failed as his BA 777 jet approached Heathrow.

On Sunday 'twice-married," "Perfect Peter" got a good licking from the News of the World: " BELLY UP, HALF NAKED and with his undercarriage covered in CHOCOLATE". 

Heather Yaxley asks "Who knows what is news?"; this story takes the (16-year-old) chocolate biscuit.

Bye bye, Cocoon...

I have managed to add a new dimension to the 02 Cocoon seeding programme... by losing mine. I wonder if whoever 'finds' it will blog about their experience?

And, yes, I do miss it...   

Citizen journalism - or PR?

Right at the beginning of our PR degree I ask students to think about the difference between a news release and a news story. I expect this to begin with an idea of who writes them and for what purpose, and to progress towards a consideration of style, tone and content. As we also teach them journalism, some students find switching from one mode to the other something of a challenge.

I was thinking about this when reading a fascinating post on citizen journalism by Kristine Lowe. Her report on a debate that marked the launch by ABC Startsiden of what she believes to be the first commercial Norwegian news site to feature a mix of citizen and traditional journalism. 

It is well worth reading, but my attention was drawn to the very end.

One of my favourite 'citizen' articles from ABC Nyheter so far is a 50-year-old who writes a letter to the business life which has made him redundant due to his age. It's a very eloquent and moving piece I doubt would have been published by mainstream media. On the other side of the coin, I also found a story on ABC Nyheter which clearly was a press release for a fair trade shop.

I asked (ABC Nyheter's community editor Heidi) Nordby Lunde, (aka Norway's blogging queen, Vampus) about this, and she told me yes, they had spotted it and taken it down, but when she had tried to explain why they had removed it to the person who posted it, he simply couldn't understand it and said: "All the other media published it uncritically, why can't I publish it on ABC Nyheter?" That, I think, sums up some of the challenges, both for citizen- and mainstream journalism.

It is indeed a challenge, and neatly summed up Kristine.

'Jail threat' in blog probe

Here's another instance that shows how often complex (and little known) legislation may impact on the activities of bloggers, as reported in the Daily Telgraph and flagged up by Martin Stabe. It begins:

The Charity Commission has warned an online blogger he could go to jail unless he submits information he has gathered about the activities of the Smith Institute, the left-wing think tank under investigation for links to the Labour Party.

The formal direction was issued to Paul Staines, who runs the Guido Fawkes political website, ordering him to release documents relating to the institute by Friday.

As Blogging Grows, So Do Its Do's and Don'ts

'Desirable' Allan Jenkins point to an excellent piece from Law.com, titled As Blogging Grows, So Do Its Do's and Don'ts. Lots of comon sense, and as Allan notes, it is indeed refreshing to see corporate lawyers saying "By all means... blog!" instead of taking the knee-jerk "better not!" stance..

Allan's previous post is about a Swedish blogger who has fallen foul of his bosses at Sveriges Radio... who may or may not have read the Law.com article.   

PR Firms=Propaganda

Thanks to Omar Ha-Redeye for pointing me to this video from John (Toxic Sludge) Stauber of PR Watch.

Ethical blogging

Here's an interesting post from Hans Kullin which I think has a resonance with the way fellow bloggers picked up on Jackie Danicki's tube experience.

Hans writes....

Running stories based on bloggers' accusations can backfire for mainstream media. That's the conclusion from the recent kerfuffle surrounding an alleged purchase of a "men's magazine". The whole thing started with a blog post by Åsa Hagelstedt where she states that she can reveal information from "a trusted source" that actor Lasse Berghagen buys porno magazines. But the blog post became more than an innocent remark when Swedish daily Aftonbladet decided to make a big story out of it. So when Berghagen strongly denied that the story was true, in a critical article in Aftonbladet, then Hagelstedt got cold feet. Her blog has now been completely deleted but the content can still be found via Google's cache for some time (quote can also be found at Sigge's blog).

Hans goes on to make some useful points:

- Do you trust your friends enough to put your career on the line?
- How can you be sure that second hand information is safe to pass on to others?
- If you are a public person, is that reason enough to be especially careful with the things you blog about?
- If you are caught with a serious mistake, wouldn't it be better to apologize and move on than to delete your blog and hide? 

I suspect some of these issues will be debated increasingly during 2007....

Passport to adventure: case study

Although blogging and other social media gained credibility with PR practitioners during 2006 there is still a clear need for supporters to produce compelling case studies.

Our Delivering the New PR conferences inspired a great deal of debate and constant emails show that people went back to work full of new ideas, but I suspect many found the hard bit was putting those ideas into practice.

And it is a challenge. Edinburgh delegate Jenny Glumoff works for VisitScotland, part of the team responsible for promoting adventure holidays - short breaks that exploit Scotland's potential as a fabulous destination for anything from mountain biking, kayaking, mountain walking, ice climbing, canyoning and gorge walking, skiing and snow boarding, ski mountaineering and white water rafting. Specifically she wants to promote an Adventure Passport which offers discounts on a range of different activities in the Lochaber and Fort William area.

It sounds like fertile ground for a social media campaign so I am asking PR bloggers to put forward ideas, and suggest strategies and tactics in a way that will establish an example of good practice that might be applicable to many other organisations.

Jenny's idea was to invite bloggers to come and try the various activities, being careful to be open and transparent about the pitches and follow up processes, and see how the messages - good or bad - travelled around the blogosphere.

She is also setting up an Adventure Passport blog which as well as being a focus for publicity activities, will provide a regular update on new activities. Luckily Jenny is keen on adventure sports herself, and many of the posts will tell of her own experiences as she roadtests Scottish attractions. If she can find the right voice, content and pictures shouldn't be a problem...

So is inviting bloggers a good idea? Assuming they are approached in the right way - and they enjoy their stay! - this seems a sound strategy to me (though it is interesting to reflect on the many differences bewteen managing these visits and a usual press facility trip).

The challenge is deciding who to invite. Jenny is looking for committed adventurers, ideally from the south of England, to try sea kayaking, mountain biking, mountain walking and climbing, ice climbing and extreme sports.

Sea kayaking is a narrow field and there don't seem to be many dedicated blogs out there; it is easy to find hundreds of bloggers who enjoy mountain biking, but they are either commercial (connected to magazine etc) or highly individual. The PR blogging community, for example, has quite a few conversational 'hubs', fairly high profile bloggers with a significant readership to whom less established bloggers look to for new ideas which they then take up and comment on. So far I have found it hard to identify adventure sport bloggers who have this sort of following - if anyone has any suggestions on how to find them, please let me know.

Another idea would be to identify a couple of high traffic general interest bloggers who might like the idea of a trip to Scotland.... Again, any ideas on who to approach, or more importantly, how to identify a useful shortlist would be appreciated. You never know, Jenny might even invite a PR blogger to visit Scotland a weekend.... (and, yes, the photo shows my bike enjoying a trip to Scotland).

I am going to be advising Jenny and watching the way the social media campaign works as part of an academic case study that will hopefully prove of value to a wide range of participants. Anyone who would like to contribute will be fully credited.

Over to you....

Comment isn't free

Comments are great but some times really useful stuff misses out on the exposure it deserves. Here's David "Essential Law" Banks commenting on the Jackie Danicki contempt thread....

....Philip started this discussion with reference to ethical behaviour by bloggers. The underpinning ethic of the Contempt of Court Act is the preservation of the judicial process, the assumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial. These are fairly fundamental principles in free societies.

Bloggers do themselves a disservice if they argue that their right to comment on whatever they want, whenever they want somehow trumps a person's right to justice.

Some people have read both David and my comments as somehow favouring the alleged attacker over the victim in our comments on Jackie's story. That is far from the case - we are both interested in defining what is responsible blogging behaviour, and I would again emphasise that I have largely confined my comments to those people who have, often with the best intentions, amplified and expanded on Jackie's posts.

It is not unusual for there to be a difference between what is ethical and what is legal... but it is usually a good idea to be aware of the distinction; having the best of intentions is not necessarily enough in itself.