The Media Show

Mr Waddington has written a note recommending us PR type folk tune in to the Media Show on Radio 4. I did indeed tune into this new weekly programme to hear its flagship show and I was pleasantly surprised. You can listen to it here.

It covered a good mix of current issues with the media:
- is the media fuelling the financial crisis?
- can blogging really influence public thought?
- how can David Cameron use the media to get people to really understand his campaign?


It's a bit ironic to have the media commenting on itself...but it certainly captured my imagination and I'm looking forward to the show next week.

misTweeting an embargo?

Last week I was mildly amused to watch two well known and respected journalists slate a PR story that - thankfully - wasn't mine on Twitter. "New leader in rubbish PR stunt of 08. Firm gets psychologist to "identify" new net deprivation syndrome they call "discomgoogolation" announced ruskin147 (aka Rory Cellen-Jones - BBC). "@ruskin147 oh, is discomg... a Sunday for Monday? No doubt." replied charlesarthur (Guardian)

What I didn't realise was that this same story actually only broke this morning. You can note also that ruskin147 wasn't impressed with this coverage "cannot believe that even Reuters fell for "discomgoogolation". For shame! Only goes to show how smart PR people are…"

Embargoes are never 100 per cent reliable but Twitterers were reading about this news, albeit in brief, five days before it launched. Although 118118, sponsors of the survey, won't be too upset as they've still secured thirty plus pieces of coverage to date, this could have been potentially damaging if the journalists had been discussing a story of financial bearing.

I'm not a great advocate of placing rules and regulations on things like Twitter, which are intended to be informal social networking arenas, but I think it is something PR's need to be taking into account and addressing when pre-selling news to journalists who are active in this sphere.

Policitally Correct?

When I saw June Sarpong was heading up a new website it didn't inspire me to have a look. But then Darren Waters "tweeted" about it and I thought, ok I'll have a look. Politics and The City has apparently been created to enable women to be more "included" in the world of politics. Sounds interesting…

Personally I think it’s a patronising pile of *@#?

Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather get my political/news information from a source that engages me in a tone that doesn’t suggest my interests can be swayed by some pretty lipstick and vacuous ramblings.

True - politics can be a little inaccessible and news sources do hold political sway. But anyone who is interested can afford 10 minutes to compare sources such as Sky News and The Daily Telegraph to get a rounded view.
False - not all women want to know the latest fashion trend/celebrity gossip all the time

Now I'm not a raging feminist, I shan't be protesting and burning my bra over this, but I just can't understand the thought process that went into thinking this would be a good political sounding board for women.

We don't need no education

The Swiss Institute of Technology, Google and IBM have conducted a study and found 600 million users have not updated their browsers leaving them vulnerable to risk as they haven't got the most up to date security patches. Once again the Beeb has the whole story. Personally, I'm not surprised and I doubt it was a big shock to many others. More often than not when I do get an automated update alert its when I'm in the middle of something and I ignore it. Now, being a bit of a geek (but don't tell anyone), I do know the importance of doing these updates and they do get done. But if an average PC user isn't au fait with why they are getting these alerts then why should they do it?

Most larger organisations do centralise their IT and therefore get security and patches rolled out on a regular basis. However, that is still leaving a vast number of companies - as well as staff who use home PC's for work purposes - vulnerable. It is vital that companies really get up to speed on educating their staff on IT security and ensuring it is followed, otherwise they continue to put themselves at risk. It is unfair to put the onus on staff to ensure data protection if you won't invest time showing them how to do it. At Lighthouse we are often talking to clients about the breaking stories around data loss and vulnerability, and as a tech PR agency we are more aware of security best practices. However, you can't expect the employees of a talent recruitment company, for example, to have a full understanding of IT when it is nothing to do with their working skill set.

Some days it feels like we can't do anything with a computer without it causing some kind of security risk, but ensuring staff have a full understanding of IT goes a long way to making sure that risk is minimised.