I was a journalist for many years and dealt with many public relations people. This includes McDonalds Corp. reps after the 1984 San Ysidro massacre, PR people on the scenes of disasters, spokespeople for politicians in trouble, and government PR people who had to get the message out and defend agencies such as the police, INS and Customs. And PR people for the image-challenged governments of Francisco Franco in Spain and Indira Gandhi in India.
But never in my life have I seen a PR approach such as what you’ll see by going to the link below: a spokesperson who won’t stop touching a TV reporter and even at one point tries to block a camera. Then he blames the TV station for trying to “disrupt” the meeting.
If you look at this video, so exactly how is he advancing the interests of his employer and his job goals by making it seem as if he won’t put his hands down as he repeats a sing-song intro line and at one point actually covers the camera? Maybe I’m missing something and my perception is wrong. But my reaction is as someone who has great respect for solid PR people (some of them gave me my best ideas for offbeat features when I worked on newspapers in Kansas and California). One of my closest friends in India was a British reporter who married the spokesperson for an Indian government agency — and she was the best PR person I had ever met.
CHECK OUT THIS MUST VIEW VIDEO HERE and you will see what looks like a Saturday Night Live sketch but isn’t. If TMV has some readers who are in PR we welcome your reaction to this video in District TMV.
I will just say: in all of my dealings with many, often beset PR people all over the world who usually wished reporters didn’t show up, I have not quite seen any approach such as this one.
Reporters often try to touch their readers with their stories; PR people don’t usually touch reporters.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.