When we asked them what makes national news we knew that we would get some honest answers. Last night Jon Bernstein (ITN), Dan Ilett (freelance writer) and Tim Weber (BBC News Online) certainly did tell the crowd gathered in the LEWIS Media Centre how it is – and how PR’s so often get it wrong. And before you leap out of your chairs, I know that many of us aren’t guilty of the undecipherable attachments, sending yesterday’s quotes over, having crap images and hiding the whole headline in too much detail half way down the page! However, it seems there are plenty out there who class themselves as PR experts who clearly aren’t practicing even the basics of media relations.
A severe case of going back to basics seems to be in order, although it isn’t all bad. Those wonderful surveys that tend to get wheeled out if the old corporate news is a bit thin on the ground? You know the ones, nine respondents, predicting that the sun will come up in the morning and go down in the evening? Well, apparently they aren’t that interesting and don’t actually qualify as news…
Why is it that some still can’t even get the ‘bleeding obvious’ right? It is giving the rest of us a bad name!
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