Robert Peston: The Shining

Been watching any of the economic woe stuff on the BBC TV news? If so, you cannot fail to have seen business editor Robert Peston and his delivery manner, supported by what is often (surely?) dangerously acrobatic gesticulation.

Even so, this is a particularly cruel pop at a senior BBC journalist.

Personally (and in my position, I can't) I would never tear strips off a hack in public, but surely the real issue is why on earth the BBC wants to put its section editors up on such lofty pedestals and have them do the news in such a wierd format.

What's next? Will they be made to tapdance in tune with their prose?

Brave BBC and the lost world of PR opportunities

The BBC has done a few brave experiments of late.

Question Time from Washington DC last night, ahead of the election, was one of them. I was about to retire with my cocoa, but it made fascinating viewing - basially, America does not seem to do the same type of rational, academic debate that Question Time delivers for British viewers with British studio audiences.

It went like this - Simon Schama would say something wise and worldly (in his slightly condescending, camp, wiggle-headed way) about why America was not necessarily viewed as a bosom buddy by everyone else on the planet. Then half the American audience would boo and hurl verbal abuse. It made Jerry Springer look like John Craven's Newsround.

Hilarious viewing, but it brought home a more serious point: the brief was for the audience to turn up and participate in a debate, but they ignored that and just shouted at each other. So often, the same is true in PR too when agencies try to get clients lined up to fulfil opportunities. People simply don't do what the media needs them to do in order to deliver the package, and it all falls apart.

A few cases in point:

- Opportunity: opinion article. What the agency gets asked to deliver is a piece devoid of any opinion, beyond a certain product being the mutt's nuts

- Paid opportunity: advertorial. Client pays to profess its expertise, then can't supply an expert to help advise on the content. Sally Whittle has been stirred by this one too.

- Opportunity: news story. Client gets to the interview and doesn't deliver any news that the journalist can take away and write same-day, or says "we've actually been doing this for a while so it's not really a story for you"

- Opportunity: feature. Interviewee is asked to talk about the market and customer needs at large but only bangs on about his/her own company. Result, no mention in the feature.


If a journalist from your local paper called and asked for a report on your team's performance last Sunday in the district cricket league, would you start talking to them about winter warmer recipes on a budget or why small businesses need more support from their banks in the current climate?

Anyway, can't wait until the US election is over and we can have Question Time back in Blighty. I hear Russell Brand might be hosting and will call out to experts over the phone rather than sticking with the panel format.

Wave of change

I've been meaning to pick up on this for ages. The newbie regional TV newscaster syndrome of an unnatural level of gesticulation (firm swiping movements with a hand to convey action, clasping of hands for sincerity, manic pointing at the studio screen to illustrate something of little significance) seems to have gripped experienced national broadcast journalists too.

Without naming names, one senior business journalist in particular, who has been hogging his/her fair share of airtime given the current economic news, seems to have taken it to new depths. I do fear the individual concerned is going to do themself an injury if it carries on. Or be awarded an honorary GCSE in Drama.

Can't we get back to words and the incisiveness of reporting being what matters to the story, rather than the accompanying antics taking centre stage? If I wanted that much action, I'd go to a Joe Kinnear press conference.

Spells like lean spirit

At the risk of being crucified for every future error on this blog, I was indignant this morning at Metro's story on schoolchildren being made to abandon spelling tests in case they find them distressing.

Perhaps we should not interview people for jobs any more because they might cry, and perhaps I should tell people their work is amazing when it's below par.

Competitiveness is part of life and certainly part of the world of work. And spelling (plus, er, a basic grasp of English) is fundamental to a PR or journalistic career. We don't want kids turning out like Rambos of punctuation or arithmetic, but the ability to spell well is driven, I think, by being tested at school and wanting to do well at those tests.

School should help you to identify what you're good at and where you can improve - areas where you'd be wise to invest more effort to compensate for any lack of natural talent. My own experience was no different - perennial girly swot at English, typically bottom of the class at needlecraft (remember the evil-looking patchwork turtle do you, teacher with the big hair and thick glasses?).

If British children are going to come into the business world devoid of the ability to compete and the ability to spell well, we'll have a labour market like football clubs - flooded with talent from elsewhere, where the desire to win and succeed is questionably greater. Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing in itself. But as a taxpayer I'd be distressed (I might even weep uncontrollably, bless me) at the thought of what I'm shelling out for educating a generation who risk being sod all use to industry.

True lies?

After months of criticism, Management Today has finally really gone for Alistair Darling - and reckons he needs PR advisors telling him to cushion the truth, as his honestly policy is screwing the economy.

Journalists practically begging politicians to fib? It's absolutley shocking, particularly given that the media always reports a complete and unpointed version of the truth, with no agenda whatsoever. Well, apart from all that Helen Mirren (though she is cool) nonsense in Metro today, which was nothing but a blatant excuse to stick HM The Queen and drugs into the same headline.

But back to Darling. Yes, whatever PR advice he is getting currently seems warped. But surely when the man supposedly managing the economy starts making open confessions about its state when most of the electorate would rather be painted a rosier picture it's time to go back to the drawing board on how PR is used in politics?

Has the age of the spin doctor finally been ended by what may well turn out to be its sickest patient?

It's the little things

Never has the oldest truism in British journalism - little happens in the silly season - been more apt.

It seems the coming of the annual news drought has been marked by a dwarf story in the popular press. Today we have the report of a vertically challenged burglar being, er, caught short and landing himself in the dock. The man in question admitted the charge.

But it's not the first time this has happened. This January, in the post-festive haze, came a story about wee people being concealed in bags by gangs in order to allegedly commit robberies.

What is fuelling the newsworthiness of smaller people and their part in what would otherwise be fairly mundane incidents? Have the tabloids got a warped fascination, perhaps fuelled by an underlying national intrigue? I Googled 'dwarf news' and tripped across this strange organisation - clearly for some people reading such news is no longer enough, they crave (in)appropriate 'ownership rights' too.

Mere coincidence that these stories seem to happen when newsflow is low? I smell a small conspiracy.