Category: Media Ethics

Details

Published: 16 November 2011

After a month’s occupation of their tented encampment outside St Paul’s Cathedral, the campaigners backing Occupy London Stock Exchange still look as they might be able to avoid a repeat of the violent end to the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York.

If OccupyLSX does succeed in thwarting legal action by the City of London Corporation – and their camp remains in place through Christmas and on into the New Year – it will be a vote of confidence in the media-savvy strategy which the London protesters adopted.

Read more …

Details

Published: 28 October 2009

Journalists are addicted to the blame game. The priority is to work out who is to blame and who should say “sorry”.  Personality-led stories attempting to hold public figures to account are the easiest to write. But journalists should be on their guard: political spin doctors and the public relations industry are showing ever greater sophistication in managing the personalisation of news and turning the “S” word to their clients’ advantage.  In a speech to the annual conference of the Institute of Communication Ethics (Coventry University, 28.10.2009) , Nicholas Jones explored the ethics of saying “sorry” and the part of apologies play in the   hyper-personalisation of political coverage.

Read more …

Details

Published: 23 October 2008

When Shami Chakrabarti appeared on stage wearing a red poppy to accept her award as 2008 communicator of the year, she triggered flashbacks which trouble me every year. Why was a civil rights campaigner the only winner at the annual PR Week awards dinner (Grosvenor House, 21.10.2008) to wear a poppy? What was the director of Liberty trying to say two and a half weeks before Remembrance Sunday?

Read more …