PR & Journalism: The Buddy Cop Movie

(Image: Tango & Cash/Warner Bros.)

By Elliot ‘Theodore-Rex’ Adams

I’ve got a buddy cop movie pitch for you. As for setting, any generic not-quite-noir city will do – what’s import is our lead characters, PR and Journalism. Yes that’s right children, it’s time to crowbar in an overworked metaphor!

One of them an uptight manipulator who will do and say anything – regardless of how true it is – to help his shadowy client get ahead, the other a gruff maverick who isn’t above biting the PR hand that feeds him and wants to get the truth from PR’s client and loathes that he has to go through him to do so.

Forced to work together by circumstance and a temporary common purpose, they fight crime and save the world as a team, but they sure as hell ain’t happy about it.

Okay, they don’t often fight crime together or save the world you smartass – do I come round your house and deconstruct your convoluted metaphors? No.

For once my ramblings aren’t completely irrelevant, because boys and girls – this shit just got real.

A few days ago Duke Nukem Forever‘s PR drone had a minor meltdown on twitter over the terrible reviews the game was getting.

Threatening to blacklist journalists and critics from receiving review copies of future titles if they didn’t provide a positive review of the apparently execrable Duke Nukem Forever – I’m not entirely convinced that it isn’t secretly a work of genius, maybe more on that later. He later tweeted that he was irked by the game’s Metacritic score, saying that “for a game with such a large marketing budget and name recognition, [it was] shockingly low.”

He has since apologised to those who were sent review copies of Duke’ and performed some wider damage control. But much internet drama has already ensued.

Journalism is too old for this shit (Image: Lethal Weapon/Warner Brothers)

To be honest, despite the fact that the PR drone has clearly misunderstood the function of reviews – they are not a measure of marketing wankery spending – those who were outraged by this are fundamentally misunderstanding the function of PR.

PR is not a friend of quality journalism, PR is a temporary ally who would prefer if the quality gaming press was declawed entirely and by some accounts has been trying to do just that.

By the industry’s own admissions PR doesn’t have a duty to tell the truth, PR doesn’t have a duty to get their client’s games fair coverage in quality publications. PR’s only duty and purpose here is to gain it an mild first reception in the press, as such, review copies serve the same function as NDAs – to give exclusivity to publications that will not harm sales.

If you are a proper journalist and could potentially give that game a range of evaluations – positive or negative – then why should the PR goblins take that chance and give you a review copy. When they could so easily give one of their limited supply of review copies to an amateurish operation they can manipulate, or media giants like Sky that can likewise be manipulated because they are so out-of-touch with technology they still preface everything with ‘Cyber-’, e.g. ‘Cyberhackers’.

together they fight crime! (Image: 48 Hours/Paramount)

The only thing that is surprising about what Redner said is that he said it in the first place. Several people over the years have told me of similar blacklisting measures – it is rarely talked about in print, but apparently a commonplace practice regardless. This is why so many online reviewers rarely score anything outside of the 60% – 95% range; a larger scale gives the illusion of range, while pressure from PR is limiting evaluation to a narrower spectrum.

But my feeling isn’t that games journalism necessarily needs to shake off PR involvement, nor that PR should be attempting to do the same to journalism. They need to work with their respective buddy cops(just reminding you of my shaky premise for this post) to learn to better deal with each others foibles and clean up this city one scumbag at a time provide fair and insightful reviews.

Is the BBC Giving Out Free Advertising Just to Fill Space?

By Elliot Adams

Scottish travel firm ‘Rabbie’s Trail Burners’ are looking to recruit around 40 new staff to lead tours and incomprehensibly BBC Scotland has chosen to run an article-shaped recruitment advert for the “world’s best job” in their business news section.

I understand that the line between reporting and promotion can be difficult to maintain in areas like business and travel journalism. But if the BBC is to maintain a high-degree of impartiality and freedom from market influence, there should always be at least some news-value to what is being covered that outweighs the benefit the firm involved gains through the publicity. For instance the beebs coverage of the tourism recovery of historic sites around Scotland, fishermen who have shifted to tourism during the summer months to conserve fish stocks, or even the launch of a new adventure travel guide for Scotland – even though this piece gives significant publicity to the new product being launched, the bulk of the story is about the rising market share held by Scottish adventure tourism in general.

In what way does the following article, “Scottish travel firm recruits for ‘world’s best job’“, have any news-value at all?

A travel firm is looking for “new talent” to act as guides on trips across Scotland and Ireland.

Described as the “best job in the world”, Rabbie’s Trail Burners said they were looking for up to 40 new “personalities” to lead tours.

Recruits will be given history and driving training but are expected to have a “natural passion for life”.

The company, which offers trips of between one and 16 days, attracted more than 35,000 visitors last year.

Rabbie’s said there were currently 12 positions available as guides, operating from Edinburgh and Glasgow, with plans to hire 40 new recruits in the next three years.

The company’s founder, Robin Worsnop, said his travel guides came from all walks of life and ranged in age from 24 to 62.

‘Remote regions’

He said: “The personalities of our driver-guides are one of the most important and memorable components of the Rabbie’s visitor experience.

“We aim to provide new and authentic experiences that take visitors off the beaten track to discover the real country and its people.”

He added: “Our training will take care of history, local knowledge and the PCV licence, but it is the natural passion, enthusiasm and appetite for life, that’s at the top of our job description.”

Driver-guide, Mac Dalrymple, who has been with Rabbie’s for three years, said: “Personally, I think it is the best job in the world.

“Every day is different. It’s not just the privilege of getting to regularly visit the most breathtaking and remote regions of the UK, but meeting so many people from so many countries, has really opened my eyes.”

Personally I see nothing to distinguish this from something the company’s own marketing department would put out as an advert. So it’s not particular surprising, but still pretty fucking shameful, that the BBC’s article is remarkably similar to the press-releases Rabbie’s Trail Burners have put out to that effect.

Blue Monday

Wall's Icecream, proud sponsor of happiness

By Elliot Adams

There’s plenty of newsvomit around today concerning the annual occurrence of ‘Blue Monday’, supposedly calculated as the most miserable day in the year. So far it’s passing has been piously observed by The Sun, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Mirror, The Sunday Times and legion uniformed bloggers who’ve plagiarised whatever publication they happen to have read today.

Churnalism of the highest order, ‘blue monday’ was not – as some have claimed – based on reasearch at Cambridge University, it was nothing more than a publicity stunt dreamt up by Sky Travel seven years ago. Sky’s pet ‘academic’ picked this date using a dubious formula with ‘debt’, ‘weather’ and other grim factors written arbitrarily in it – he has gone on to make a habit of selling similar concepts, for instance, the happiest day of the year formula he created for Wall’s ice-cream.

This year it is claimed that the date of Blue Monday was derived from a peak in demand for counselling services. The problem is that the claim is now being made by mentaline.com a company that sells – suprise, suprise – online counselling services. Several other corporations are tagging along to sell similar products; although perhaps one could find ActionAid’s bandwagon jumping less repulsive as it is in a good cause.

Obviously the asinine formulae and studies drawn up to support these faddish PR events are uninformative, deceptive and wholly driven by people whoring themselves out to corporate money. Which is all quite comic really, but aren’t they more dangerous than that? Because these alarmingly frequent stories hold a considerable share in coverage of medical or scientific issues, and as such, are clogging a valuable space, where the press could be fulfilling it’s informative social purpose, with meaningless drivel and fluff that only undermines the legitimacy and authority of science, medicine and journalism. The 17th of January stands out as the laziest day of the year for those employed in the art of regurgitating corporate press-releases and damaging the reputation of the press, but that’s it.