The Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party Campaigning, and Trade Union Administration Bill is soon to be debated in the UK’s houses of parliament. I am with Lord Bell in hating this proposal. But what foxes me is the way my great industry is so Guardianista. My every instinct tells me that this is a sophisticated case of shooting, or at least chaining, the messenger. Read on ›

Here is an on the record briefing about Lord Justice Leveson’s proposals for “improving” the British police’s PR. It begins with the paragraph where Leveson recommends altering the PR lexicon.  Read on ›

Following my piece ‘PRs shouldn’t rush to welcome Leveson‘, Phil Morgan, Director of Policy and Communications at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), kindly responded. His comment and my reply were too detailed to leave in my comments. So here’s a post that starts with his remarks and ends with my response in the form of an open letter to CIPR that explores some more the challenges Leveson’s report poses for PR professionals in the UK.  Read on ›

[This is a guest post by Richard D North.] The most important questions about the BBC and Savile saga are often left a little late in the discussion. First, why did anyone of ordinary savviness at the top of a mass entertainment organisation think the old weirdo was worth a post-mortem tribute, granted the strength of the rumours which had been going round for years? Read on ›

There has been lots of talk in PR circles about value networks and the networked society. Here I take a closer look at what the fuss is all about and issue a note of caution and a call to moderate the hype. Read on ›

I had thought that Facebook would go the way of Friends Reunited, Bebo and MySpace: hyped today, sidelined tomorrow. But what if Facebook became the new Google? That’s now the company’s objective and it is backed by some substance. Read on ›

Warning: this post is counter-revolutionary. A recent BBC’s Culture Show celebrated how WikiLeaks exposes anything which comes its way with no chance of legal comeback. Supposedly this will usher in a revolution in openness. Here’s the case against transparency in defence of trust. Read on ›

This post is a reaction to Paul Holmes’s post Transparency is a principle, not a tool for manipulating the public. His headline was much more one-sided than his text, which was well-argued. So what comes next is a critique of the Big Idea of his headline, not his considered view. Read on ›

Financial Times (FT) research suggests that the public trusts itself to look after savings and investments more than banks, building societies or independent financial advisers. Yet most respondents said that, despite their lack of trust, they had not reduced their risk levels in these bodies. Read on ›

My “10 points: social media reality check” provoked some interesting challenges from Twitters. So this piece is dedicated to @PressReleasePR, aka Danny Brown, who sparked the debate. Read on ›