Tony Kaye wins a Grammy
I am so pleased for my great friend and client Tony Kaye – who has won a Grammy for best short form video for his promo for Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”. It features a huge array of famous faces lipsyncing to the track from the American V album (produced by Rick Rubin) […]
Mark on Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera is the largest and most controversial Arabic News Channel in the Middle East, offering news coverage 24 hours a day from around the world. Mark contributes to its round up of 2007 on Al Jazeera’s media show “The Listening Post” Madelaine McCann Harry Potter
A changing world puts public relations in a spin.
Never mind Nick Davies’s suggestion that overworked ‘churnalists’ are being hoodwinked by PRs, Mark Borkowski says flaks and hacks are both struggling to cope with the news cycle. So the media world is flipping over and over like a gigantic overdone pancake because of the ethical fix caused by publication of Nick Davies’ book Flat […]
Poor spin
This is from CMU Daily, a daily email round-up and one of my favourite sources of info – this nib exposes PR at its worst with journalism as it should be… great stuff PLAY.COM ENTER THE DOWNLOAD MARKET Etailer Play.com yesterday announced it was launching a new UK download platform that will make music available […]
The Chalford Donkey joins the disappeared …
As the Chalford Donkey disappears off the media agenda let’s not forget the other animals that ignited a newspaper firestorm .. The lion of Kabul, Phoenix the calf, The Tamworth Two, Blackie the donkey ,Dolly the sheep – where are they all now?
Lies and newspaper spin
After a particularly difficult weekend helping out a poor innocent who was the subject of some unpleasant attention from a Sunday newspaper, a note arrived in my inbox from a pal who had heard about the dilemma. “Take a look at this to see how the weasel words and lies of a news desk are treated […]
How to bring Milan, Davos and Los Angeles to London
Times A £200 million national film centre. A permanent home for fashion shows in London. Funding for avant-garde film projects. A Davos-style arts and finance conference. These are among a range of commitments to the arts being set out by the Government next week. Mark Borkowski, who works in public relations for arts and media […]
The Archbishop and his missing PR muscle
Media meltdowns never fail to astound me; the Archbishop of Canterbury’s PR faux pas last week is probably one of the biggest slip ups – it’s high on a list of cock ups alongside Pope Benedict XVI’s Islam blunder, Prescott’s Green Pledge, Stephen Byers getting his times-tables wrong, John Selwyn Gummer feeding his daughter a beef burger, […]
Chalford Donkey Part 20
The media circus moved out of my village on Sunday. Without doubt the best take on the surreal turn of events came from Cole Moreton. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/chalfords-donkey-derby-780514.html The aftermath seems to have divided the community; some suggest that it’s painted the village as full of eccentric geriatric freaks who can’t clamber up the hill, others have […]
Chalford donkey
I am compelled to write about an extraordinary event that has spiralled today concerning my own sleepy village in Gloucestershire. Someone once wrote “..if ever a place deserved the often over-used cliché, “undiscovered gem,” Chalford is the place! ” The village is located in a ridiculously lovely valley bounded by strikingly steep hillsides. It’s an […]
Journo gaffs
I often comment on the stupidity of PRs, but idiocy in media land is not only demonstrated by publicists, but also journalists. I was told two corking tales by a very well placed journalist friend of mine involving two astounding hack faux pas. The first was about none other than Britney Spears; a story was […]
Propaganda and second hand news
Two great opinion pieces in the Guardian today written by Peter Wilby on the subject of Alastair Campbell’s Cudlipp memorial lecture last week – http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/feb/04/media.pressandpublishing – which neatly seg-ways into Nick Davies op ed rant to help push his book Flat Earth News. The opinion feature “Our media have become mass producers of distortion. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2251982,00.html […]
Little Cruise Missiles
I notice the Guardian has picked up on my blog over the weekend about Tom Cruise, Scientology and the web community. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/04/news
CRUISING FOR A BRUISING
2008 is a bad PR year for Tom Cruise. “Being a scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it’s not like anyone else when you drive past. You know you have to do something about it because you know you’re the only one that can really help”. http://gawker.com/5002269/the-cruise-indoctrination-video-scientology-tried-to-suppress.
Derek Conway: What were you thinking?
What a mistake that Christmas card was, says Jasper Gerard. Didn’t Derek Conway know that a Tory MP posing with his family meant he had something to hide? The Daily Telegraph 31st January 2008 Reaching for the marmalade, you glance at the photo on the Telegraph’s front page – and you are suddenly consumed by […]
Thriller stunt on Youtube via the London Underground
I love this. A bunch of dance students seek fame by performing a stunt on the London Underground and then post it on Youtube. I am reliably informed that these are not a bunch of kids that have made up a dance routine in their living room who thought it would be funny to dance […]
Martin Amis and his PR slip..
Whoops what a celebrity slip up this morning. The unguarded comments made by Martin Amis appear in the Independent . The flak who policed the interview needs to be shot. The following extract might just cause the author a few problems. “And he has always loved this multiracialism, he says.” At that time, I had a Pakistani girlfriend, […]
PR Watch
Oh dear, another tale of stupid PR folk. There is a bit of a kerfuffle in the U.S. between Judith Siers-Poisson from the Centre for Media and Democracy and a hapless PR outfit fronted by Jennifer Windrum of the Swanson Russell Associates PR firm. PR watch has never been shy about being critical about the […]
Mob or Gob?
The hearing on the suggested banning of Marion Knight from Compton is being held today. It’s interesting to see how Marion “Suge” Knight, the co-founder of Death Row Records, has called his recent involvement in being banned from Compton, “a publicity stunt”. Knight has been included in a request to ban members of the Mob […]
Nicholas Jones blog on Spinwatch
Two of John Birt’s former corporate strategists –who both became political advisers to Tony Blair — are now working on plans to top-slice the BBC’s licence fee as a way of financing other public service broadcasters http://www.spinwatch.org/content/blogcategory/306/85/