This playground spat was sparked by some leaked emails to the blogosphere. It seems Facebook wanted to traduce Google’s new Social Circle offering for violating users’ privacy rights without being identified as the shit-stirrer. The cause of the media “outrage” was an upfront admission from BM in an email trail that:

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose my client yet.”

One supposes the reason for non-disclosure was that Facebook’s reputation on privacy matters is arguably worse than Google’s. BM added, however, that the full facts of the case they were advocating were already in the public domain. In other words, they were inviting somebody to follow up some pointers.

So, never mind that BM has apologized for their role in this; I’ll criticize that in a moment. I’m going to argue that their two PRs behaved pretty well (see here for leading PR Steve Earl’s similar opinion).

In this instance, BM were dealing with somebody who knew the agency were being paid by a third party for PR work. The PR agency also believed that their potential advocate supported the views they sought to spread. They outlined some lines of argument which were already in the public domain and not unreasonable. The blogger they approached was advised to check BM’s facts for accuracy and for the degree to which he agreed with them. What does it matter who was paying BM? Would it have mattered if it was the Devil? I think not.

Sure, BM broke their own ethical code of practice. They did not walk the moral talk they spout. But the worst thing about this whole episode was playing the blame game. Questioning a client’s integrity is not a good image for our trade. The denial from Facebook also did the firm no favours. Facebook is now, anyway, once more the main target of the media’s angst about the “betrayal” of user privacy rights.

The best response from both parties to the exposure of their relationship would have been simply to admit to it. Silence might have also sufficed. Unfortunately, my beloved “so what?” would have been problematic given how BM was flouting its own code of conduct.

But let’s not let the media off the hook. Their outrage is bluster. The media rarely tells their readers which story was sparked or parked by a PR working on behalf of a particular client. Readers are mostly left in the dark about the who, the what and how of the birth of a story. If it were not so, the names of PR agencies, political insiders and their staff would be all over nearly every story published.

Quite rightly, the best media – just like the best PRs – look to the accuracy, veracity and fairness of what they say, write and advocate to establish their credibility.

The fact is a writer might have all sorts of interests and prejudices – including commercial – when he states this or that opinion. He might have shares, or old grudges, or – yes – a payment directly from a party to write a particular piece. Does it matter? The answer has to be, up to a point and depending on the circumstances. For instance, a paid employee writing about their firm cannot pretend to be an independent bystander. An analyst or financial journalist recommending a share as a buy, and who has a personal financial motive for doing so, must declare it openly etc..

Nevertheless, as a reader, I am most interested in a writer’s opinion. If I find it interesting (well-argued, peculiar, entertaining, whatever), then I’m likely to be influenced by it. If I see a writer’s byline, I will be drawn to it if he was interesting in the past. Their new bit of writing will either continue to amuse, or fail to, on its merits. I can usually judge those myself. But sometimes I depend on the authority of the writer’s editors for my sense of the writer’s merits. That’s where the reputation of the likes of The Economist or WSJ etc. matters most.

So let’s keep this real. BM did not really sin. Our industry should come clean about how it and the media really functions and about on what premises trust and integrity really rest.

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Crampton says that man does not live by scrubbed pavements alone, and he’s right. In Zurich city as night falls, across the road from the opera house, along the beautiful lakeside promenade near Bellevue, you’ll find hundreds of teenagers loitering. At their feet will be crates of cheap supermarket-bought booze. It’s binge-drinking and joint-smoking time. They create a right mess, which they leave behind for others to clean. But what’s weird to us Brits is that there’s no police in sight and there’s no public stink about it.

When the kids are suitably tanked up they head for the city’s night clubs to take harder drugs and dance. Again, they are left alone to get on with it. Of course, like the underage drinking, cannabis and hard drugs are illegal, but the young have little to fear from the law on Friday and Saturday nights as they openly flout it.

There’s a freedom at play in Zurich that you won’t find in London anymore. But if a fight starts the police suddenly appear on the scene in force. They go in hard because young people sometimes carry knives (Swiss law regarding weapons is relaxed until you try to use one on somebody else). However the courts – unlike the police – are likely to treat the kids gently, which amazes the Germans whose laws are much tougher.

In so-called Swiss-style, Zurich’s left-wing and Green authorities recently ruled that bars showing the World Cup in South Africa on TV must turn the sound off. This decision struck most people as silly in a small city that allows 500 bars and clubs to open after midnight. The authorities heard the protest and allowed the sound.

Noise is a major issue in Switzerland. In my village on Zurich’s Gold Coast the one thing you must not do is make a racket. There is a pervading calmness and church-like silence, which the odd laugh, bark, kid or lawnmower pierces. There’s hardly anybody on the streets. In such places you feel the numbness of Switzerland’s inward-looking family-orientated village life.

As I see it, Zurich city is a sanity-saving zone. It provides easy-going relief from the close-knit, sometimes stultifying, small towns and villages in which most of Switzerland’s population live.

Bunburying Gnomes: How the elite plays away

The Gnomes of Zurich are practicised masters of Bunburying between the city and their local communities. Unlike in the UK, they’ve never had to worry about being exposed by the tabloid press. There’s little appetite among the Swiss public for knowing what people get up to away from home. Well, so long as they don’t do what one billionaire did when he took underage girls back to his suite at the super-elite Dolder Hotel at 3 a.m. and ended up in prison.

Gnomes cannot rock ‘n’ roll in their garden, outside their house, in the village square, or be seen the worse for wear by their neighbours, except at Zurich’s Street Parade or the local Chilbi. But if they head for Zurich centre they can sample freely almost any bohemian flavour they fancy. Yes, Swiss Germans are wonderfully contradictory.

One of the great attractions of Zurich, besides contemporary art collections, cinemas, circuses, modern cuisine, museums, trams and trains, is the skiing nearby. And what’s striking is how in winter the partying moves partly from Zurich city to places like Davos and St. Moritz. Posh they might be, but both ski resorts are buzzing with all night romping, some drug-taking, loads of boozing and the boisterousness you once found in Brighton and Blackpool, before New Labour outlawed a good night out. But that’s the fun that British university students and the British upper-middle-classes still outrageously pursue after pretending to ski on the piste.

Yet middle-aged families (I’m talking about mine here) can safely take their kids out at night in a ski resort or in Zurich city. That is so long as they don’t slip on the icy streets, and so long as they know which streets to avoid at 3 a.m.. What’s more, there’s plenty to do in both places for people of all ages and lifestyles.

So here comes some advice to Mr. Crampton from a British PR based in Zurich. Next time you spend a couple of days in a city, I suggest that you do more than walk the streets on a quiet Sunday morning before you traduce it in The Times.

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Whatever Gordon Brown said or did about Libya he would have faced criticism. He was in a no-win situation. Moreover, his critics missed this point: it is a noble art – responsibility even – of a leader not to reveal all that she or he knows or thinks when under pressure.

In that sense, Gordon Brown did well this time around, and it played well to his taciturn image; an image that would have served him splendidly had he stayed true to it more often. This time he was also very effective – in using the one statement he did make – condemning the hero’s welcome the convicted terrorist received on his return to Tripoli.

Meanwhile, Bronwen Maddox got to the heart of the wider issues at stake in yesterday’s The Times:

The release of the Lockerbie bomber symbolises Libya’s move in from the cold. Obama and Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, may have condemned the decision by Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Minister — and by inference the British Government’s lack of intervention — but the Administration is giving time and attention to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

I would add that the release also symbolizes – on the world stage – that Scotland’s devolved government is more than a symbolic institution. That was a point well understood by the Scottish National Party’s leader Alex Salmond when he wholeheartedly, and without much public backing, backed Kenny MacAskill’s decision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

Yes, this was a complex affair. Not least the latest statement from the Colonel’s son Saif al Islam Gaddafi clarifying how his earlier comments about the release, a prisoner transfer agreement and trade deal had been misunderstood by the media. Perhaps he should have stayed silent first time around or picked his first words more carefully. There was, he said, no quid pro quo.

By the way, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi’s account of the relationship of Scottish justice to his release is compelling here.

The truth is that there has been much misreporting and even more speculation about the known facts (not many) by politicians and media bent on taking the moral high ground. All good fun, but most of it will not pass the test of time.

But Britain is not alone in getting into a flap over Libya. Switzerland, where I live, was once thought exemplary at managing such delicate affairs. However, one of the Alpine-state’s cantons “declared war” on Muammar Gadhafi’s other son, Hannibal, when it arrested him, without first considering the consequences for the country as a whole. The Swiss government was later forced to apologize after Libya withdrew its billions from Swiss banks, detained two Swiss in Libya, and cut off oil supplies.

The lessons? I stand by wisdom of the Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz, a master of strategy and tactics. He said that in order to win a war (one infers PR, diplomatic and commercial as well as military) one does not need to win every battle, or indeed any battles at all. It is the sense of the bigger picture, of knowing where one’s long term interests lie as one makes compromises that matters. It is about knowing – conceptualizing – how the jigsaw fits together that at the end of the action separates leaders, winners, and big thinkers from the also-ran.

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The BBA communication team seem to think they are in the audience. Why aren’t they on the stage directing their own drama?

It is clear that the banks are getting a bad media rap. It might also be true that journalists do not understand the credit crunch and the recession well. However none of that justifies the BBA’s moan.

There’s been a chronic shortage of banking spokespeople lining up to tell us what’s been going on.

The notable exception being John Varley of independently-minded Barclays. That one is also a hard sell. The Times reports confidence and trust are at such a low-ebb that Barclays’ £5.3 billion or more expected profit has not improved perception:

As a public relations brief, it is the financial equivalent of defending vivisection or the transportation of nuclear waste through a pretty village: you think your case is solid and justifiable, but no matter how hard you argue it, nobody wants to listen.

We certainly don’t need lots of PR spokespeople speaking up as much as lots of senior people explaining themselves. But Lesley McLeod tells PR Week:

The story has moved away from financial journalists either because newspapers do not have the staff any longer or because it is dealt with on the news pages. Clearly some of these journalists do not have an understanding of the issues.

A lot of these people are now either inexperienced or they’re taking [information] directly from PA.

According to McLeod, the Treasury PR machine is more interested in communicating political messages than the financial intricacies to the media. So what’s new? Their first loyalty is to their political bosses. Neither that fact nor media “illiteracy” about banking issues should surprise.

In the early 1990s as head of media relations at the Council of Mortgage Lenders I saw for myself how bad news gets politicised fast. It is an old challenge listed on every well-rehearsed crisis management plan.

The problems the banks face are of wider importance to the firms PRs represent. There is a pressing need to develop PR strategies for this recession and the recovery that will follow. At stake is the restoration of trust in financial institutions and much more.

The way forward is for PR machines to take responsibility for communicating their messages to audiences.

The swift disintermediation of traditional media institutions creates opportunities for PRs to create their own media. For instance, if the media are so bad, where was the brilliant bankers’ website(s) daily pumping out the good stuff so readers could go to the horse’s mouth without the intermediation of the useless press (if that’s what it is)?

Today’s bankers can create their own Web-based media machine easily and cheaply – print, TV, radio, interactive and direct. There are numerous platforms to exploit from YouTube and Facebook to Twitter; and a thousand others that the banks can invent. They are not reliant on traditional media to get across their point.

New media or Next Media – as Charlie Beckett of POLIS calls it – allows them to communicate proactively over the heads of or alongside traditional media. In that sense Obama shows the way forward. He has created online network ready to mobilise. He uses his network to interact with and influence the mainstream media agenda.

Don’t get this wrong. “Old” media are not redundant and “new” media triumphant. It is not that simple. There are no substitutes. More it acknowledges that there is a new way to cement bonds with stakeholders. Effective communication today requires a more public participatory and connected process, with journalists no longer being gatekeepers, but facilitators, and news being more of a process, or service.

Banks are walking a tightrope. They have savers, borrowers, shareholders and taxpayers to consider. The forces at work are contradictory, and often their interests are irreconcilable. It is no wonder, then, that the media have lots of conflict to report and different interest groups’ gripes, fears and worries to portray.

The banks, on the other hand, have unique insight. They should be explaining the banking crisis, nationalisation…credit crunch…extent of liabilities such as toxic mortgage debt, and promoting the solutions for rebooting the system. Banks and their PRs have to make plain how things really are. Moaning will not do.

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The police have taken “transparency” too far. Instead of organising cover ups – another no-no – the cops have exposed their inner thoughts and speculations stream of consciousness-style. No sooner are statements made; apologies and clarifications follow. The police’s beg forgiveness plea over the Tory MP Damien Green case was a classic example. Such episodes paint a picture of chaos at the heart of the police’s communication practice.

The Metropolitan Commissioner Sir Ian Blair was much too much in our face until the media blew up in his. His attention-seeking lost our respect. Had he not jumped to conclusions and then spoke to the media during the first hours – days even – of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Tube, he might still be Commissioner for London today.

The police have damaged their credibility by releasing half-baked speculative information during ongoing investigations. Reputations of the investigated get trashed in the process – Forest Gate “terror” arrests, Harry Redknapp’s house-search with the media alerted in advance. The police are now known for being gaff prone.

Have the police taken on-board too much advice from media gurus. Or too little?

Whatever the explanation, combative politician-style real-time rebuttals and comment communication has met with failure. In short, an offensive proactive approach might work for politicians, but it is a disaster for the police.

Holding fire with comment and statements during media-led public opinion storms requires strong nerves. It requires maturity. But nobody said managing police PR was easy.

I do not believe that leaking information is always wrong. It is just that the police have got carried away with attempting to “manipulate” coverage in their favour. But that’s a mug’s game. It’s a game for losers because the cards are stacked in the media’s favour. The police must set the rules, not be led by the media’s and the mob’s insatiable demands.

Moreover, some police officers have been seduced by the promotion prospects that they suspect being a high-profile cop provides. Only to discover too late that the media often bites the hand that feeds them and that public adulation easily turns to condemnation. Puffed egos of media cops also breeds resentment among rank and file coppers. It sows the seeds of the high-profile personality conflicts that have plagued the Metropolitan Police Service.

Cops are not employed to be celebs or media players. They should keep their political thoughts and internal differences behind closed doors. Or at least the property of their trade associations.

PR professionals are employed to educate the public about the role of the police in fishing for evidence and maintaining public order. Their allegiance is to their employer, not the media. Their task is to defend the police’s reputation.

It matters that when the police do speak that what’s said carries weight and is sustainable.

Let’s stop spinning law and order.

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