Posts Tagged ‘murdoch’

Many media commentators are speculating on who exactly has the most to lose from the precipitous events caused by the News of the World hacking scandal. The obvious casualties are the hundred journalists who have been pushed out into the cold. Murdoch has withdrawn from BSkyB bid. Other titles are in a definitive tailspin. Andy Coulson could be looking at some time in the slammer.

Arguably, the incandescent political damage done by the phone hacking has savaged the Prime Minister’s brand. Any scandal that needs to propel a failing opposition leader into a favourable light requires emergency PR council. Alas, Ed Milliband isn’t free to dance on the Prime Minister’s misfortune because he too is aided by an ex News International journalist.

Matthew Freud is perhaps one player who has even more to lose. I’ve been operating a PR company breathing the same oxygen as Matthew, but he’s been on an impressive mission and built a far bigger empire. Make no mistake, the omnipresent Freud, eminence grise, is held on high by the phantom in the wings. The PR industry gives credence to the fact that he is the country’s most powerful PR broker. His influence, aided by his marriage to the Murdoch family and his close friendship with Rebekah Brooks, simply cannot be ignored. He sits in the middle of the powerful circle to the advantage of many of his clients.
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In a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth, or so it would seem to anyone born after 1989, there was a big TV name called Michael Elphick. He had a hit show, attracting millions of viewers. He’d been a party animal in his time and, for some reason, a Sunday taboid editor decided to take him down a notch. Elphick drafted me in to try and wrangle the gorilla.

This was a time when mobile phones were nothing more than a twinkle in the eye of the Star Trek props department and folk depended on land lines. A time when many, many celebrities chose to make themselves ex-directory, their number only available to friends, to protect their privacy. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday was a momentous day for British journalism and, of course, the PR industry. The world’s biggest English speaking Sunday tabloid newspaper is dead. Rupert Murdoch’s action to try and halt the hurricane sweeping through his empire by taking a Butcher’s cleaver to his own corporate flesh was tactical filicide.

It seems clear from the events of recent days, especially the confusion and contradictory messages from the News International camp, that the company was struggling to thwart the meltdown of the brand and counter the opprobrium.

The move to close the paper, and thereby protect the brand, took my breath away. As a veteran voyeur, I’ve seen some of the extraordinary events Murdoch’s committed in Fleet Street, yet I am unable to work out if this one is a masterstroke or a gesture of panic. I can only suggest that this was a ruthless, brutal and cynical publicity stunt. Read the rest of this entry »

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought MySpace in 2005 for $580m. Yesterday it sold to an online ad company for around $35m. Few tears will be shed for Rupert’s $545m loss.

Did anyone know the true value of MySpace? More pertinently, does anyone recall the MySpace hype? Current PR hot air suggests that other media darlings will crash and burn. The huge corporate guerrillas fail to see true value because they do not understand that many of the channels actually grow, flourish and survive on their own authenticity.

So often, many pay top dollar for hype and PR muscle to inflate the market, failing to comprehend the strength of the tool they are using. Just think about reality TV, or even brands like GaGa or Cheryl Cole. They are all huge money spinners, wanted and adored for a fleeting moment in time. The market demands beautiful people with compelling narratives. However, they all take for granted the most important factor; the audience. Read the rest of this entry »

In the 21st Century, with the Twitter cycle outpacing the news cycle by a length, with fewer people working for newspapers and, with Murdoch insisting that content has taken a step up to Emperor, stories move too fast for journalists to stop for anything as paltry and deadbeat as a fact.

The truth is dismal, slow and unsexy in this world of RSS feeds and instant Twitter fixes and papers are so desperate to keep up that the truth is the first thing to suffer.

Look at this article about Steven Gerrard, in which the facts have been played fast and loose in a bid to create a ’story’. The popular news cycle is about soap opera now, not truth. We are living in a world where conspiracy theorists hold the high ground and we are so swamped with untruth, half truth and scurrilous supposition that newspapers or enemies of a brand (from the England team to Marmite) can feed whatever vicious fluff they like into the rumour mill and produce a story – such as this one about Gerrard and Terry, which skates close to a possible truth (in this case, possible enmity between Terry and Gerrard over the England captaincy) – that it is easy to believe. Read the rest of this entry »

Speculation surrounds the departure of Jonathan Ross from the BBC after 13 years – did he jump or was he pushed?
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As the former editor of the News of the World turned PR man for David Cameron, Andy Coulson’s appearance before the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee the other day was always likely to be difficult – this is a high-pressure enquiry into the phone hacking scandal.

His performance was a masterstroke, however – a blend of careful honesty and equally careful image management. Coulson came across as forthright and honest – and he looked relaxed in a suit that could easily have graced the pages of GQ. Importantly, he did not battle the MPs he was facing but was carefully compliant.

There’s no doubt that he knows not to make himself the story – he kept his personality in the background and presented the facts as he saw them. It was abundantly clear, from this appearance, that he has been a major influence on the Tory front bench and on David Cameron in particular. Watching him conducting himself told us much about how he is working with the Tories.

He was as impressive as Alastair Campbell used to be in the same role for Tony Blair, although he cuts a very different dash from Campbell. Where Campbell was more of a Nobby Stiles, Coulson comes across as something of a Cardinal Richelieu, albeit a Richelieu who is prepared to admit his mistakes, which is more than can be said for some MPs.

But would he rather be the PR man for a likely future Prime Minister or to have remained in the editor’s chair at the News of the World? He fell on his sword for the sake of the Murdoch empire in 2007 after the phone tapping scandal involving rogue agents, having carefully built a career in journalism. I would imagine that there’s still a sense of loss about that lurking in the carefully polished depths.

At a time when Sunday newspapers are under ever greater pressure to land scoops – whatever the method and consequence – I imagine Coulson’s safe with the Tories for now, especially since he handled himself so effectively under pressure in front of the Commons select committee and given that his media management of the Tories has, on the whole, been equally effective. He certainly proved he’s an asset to David Cameron in front of the select committee and despite calls for his resignation, I would suggest that he’s not likely to leave this job at present.