How The Times lost focus

Posted on April 10, 2012 by admin

To see how “research” can be shockingly misused look no further than a story on the front page of today’s Times (April 10).

On the face of it, it spells doom for London mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone: “Voters in outer London appear likely to back Boris Johnson for a second term as Mayor. They dismiss Ken Livingstone as dishonest.”

Inside, spread across two pages, is more bad news for Ken ‘The Newt’ Livingstone, under the heading ‘Boris? Mad as a hatter – but you just can’t trust Red Ken’.

The story quotes “residents of a key suburban borough” as defending Boris ‘Bullingdon’ Johnson’s privileged background, work ethic, and even his extra-marital affairs. “Praise for Mr Johnson was expressed in terms rarely heard in connection with domestic politicians,” the article continues.

While the inside page story makes it clear that these were the findings of a Populus focus group, I wonder how many readers realise how small these groups are. They would have to read nearly 300 words before learning that this one comprised seven people.

Personally, not being a Londoner, I couldn’t care less whether Ken or Boris wins, but I do care that my favourite national newspaper gives front page credence to such a tiny sample of voters and makes huge generalisations about the intentions of many thousands of voters. No wonder Ken thinks he’s being persecuted by the media.

Focus groups are a notoriously unreliable method of research. Selecting a balance of personality or voter types to join the groups is tricky. Asking the right questions in a way that does not influence the answers is tricky. Ensuring dominant individuals do not take over the discussion is tricky. And the trickiest task of all is interpreting correctly the group’s conclusions.

‘Mad as a hatter’ would be a good description of anyone who put their faith in just one focus group. You need several to even begin to hazard a guess at what the general populace might be thinking. You certainly wouldn’t build political policy on the basis of a single group.

It was misleading to run a front page story without making the smallness of the sample much clearer.

It was also unfair to Ken Livingstone. If you assume that predictions of success are likely to sway voters in Boris Johnson’s favour then stories like this could become a self fulfilling prophecy.

It’s interesting to read why the world’s most valuable company does not run focus groups.
Jonathan Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design, explained: “They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products.”

I can back that up with personal experience. My most expensive business mistake ever was based on putting too much faith in focus groups, and believing that these tiny samples could be relied on to represent a wider truth.

-GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

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When someone steals your reputation

Posted on February 27, 2012 by admin

Ever lost something important to you?

How about your good name, your reputation?

There’s a poignant chapter to do with this in one of the Travis McGee novels by American crime writer John D. MacDonald.

Set in wealth-bloated Florida in the 1960s, beach bum and “knight errant” McGee lives on a boat called the Busted Flush, which he won in a poker game.

He’s a private eye of sorts, shining an excoriate light on the underbelly of a corrupt America, helping the underdog, rescuing damsels in distress, slaying establishment dragons.

In short, a modest, genuine and unassuming hero you want on your side in trouble or, if you’re one of McGee’s invariably beautiful girlfriends, holding you tight.

One day he gets a surprise visit from a charterboat skipper, the humble, God-fearing Van Harder.

He’d been stitched up big time by a debt-laden land developer who faked his own death and fled to Mexico with umpteen $100 dollar notes courtesy of some cash loans by a duped bank.

Van Harder, down on his luck, desperate, stricken, says to McGee: “What I heard…was that if somebody lost something important to them, you’d try to get it back, and if you did, you’d keep half what it’s worth?”

McGee nods: “That’s close enough. So?”

Then the reply from a proud man: “They is stolen from me my good name, McGee.”

In real life, a hardworking businesswoman in the South of England, with a hitherto unblemished record, found herself at the wrong end of serious allegations by a builder in a regional newspaper two years ago.

Her professional and personal reputation was, from that moment, scattered to the four winds; her distress, the sense of helplessness, of shame, of having her kind character called into question, was palpable.

He was irate that she had, understandably, withheld payment for below-standard work on fitting out her new business premises; he took his grievance public.

Now it has back-fired on him; the boot is firmly on the other foot after she took legal action.

This month a judge awarded her substantial damages; she left the county court blameless, her reputation restored, without a blemish, vindicated.

With admirable decency and integrity, the newspaper published a front page article giving her side of the story in full and reporting how the judge found in her favour because the standard of work by the builder was, to put it mildly, not up to scratch. There was also a campaign of intimidation by her accuser, said the judge.

The article set the record straight to tens of thousands of people in a way that simple, heartfelt pleas of innocence to friends and customers could not.

For nearly two years this honest woman had lived under a cloud, and it preyed on her mind terribly. After all, her good name had been stolen.

Now, thankfully, her good name is back - http://tinyurl.com/6njgrfo – as was Van Harder’s when McGee backed his case in the thriller The Empty Copper Sea.

We were able to advise the lady in a small way.

While we are no McGees, we share the same sense of justice.

As do the journalists and, no doubt, as do you.

- RON WAIN, DEEP SOUTH MEDIA LTD

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Defending the indefensible

Posted on January 21, 2012 by admin

Chatting to a barrister about the moral dilemma of defending a paedophile in court set me wondering how a PR advisor should react when asked to defend the indefensible.

For the barrister there is no dilemma about defending someone accused of even the most heinous crimes. Democracy and justice demand that no-one should lose their liberty without the prosecution being challenged to prove its case.

Does a similar ethic apply to the PR industry? Could we argue that no-one should lose his reputation without having the right to challenge the truth of the story?

If Captain Schettino, currently the world’s most reviled individual, asked for advice on defending or explaining his actions to the media should we help him?

We are told he drank wine with a beautiful blond woman then recklessly steered the Costa Concordia onto rocks and abandoned his passengers to their fate. Each day we learn something worse about him.

But can all these stories be true? On the basis of previous media lynchings we can assume that however badly he may have behaved at least some of what the papers are telling us is false. Perhaps there is nothing to be said in his defence, but perhaps there is, and if there is people should be told.

Occasionally people hunted down by the media turn out to be entirely innocent. Christopher Jefferies, landlord of poor Jo Yeates, was destroyed by the tabloids because they got it into their silly, vindictive little heads that he looked guilty of her murder.

The parents of Madeleine McCann were cruelly abused until Clarence Mitchell, a former BBC News reporter, started acting as their spokesman and talked or threatened their media persecutors into treating them fairly. Coincidentally, he is now working for the PR firm Burson-Martseller, representing the owners of the Costa Concordia. The chap deserves a medal.

No medal though for the international PR firms who acted for the Gadaffi regime in Libya and trousered vast sums, putting a gloss on the reputation of a mass murderer. Were they naïve, greedy or simply amoral? Could these people look the families of his victims in the eye and defend their actions? I doubt it.

But like the barrister defending a guilty man, there is an ethical way of defending a client’s reputation and explaining his actions, and it starts and ends with telling the truth.

-GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

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Looking on the bright side

Posted on January 4, 2012 by admin

I’m all for looking on the bright side, and by golly we need a bit of sunshine, so thank you Steve Auckland, group managing director of Northcliffe Media.

But maybe claiming a 50 per cent rise in sales of the Torquay Herald Express was putting too much gloss on what was in reality a massive fall?

Last June this excellent newspaper changed to a weekly after 86 years as a daily publication with the loss of around 16 editorial jobs. Before the switch it was selling 20,000 a day, around 120,000 a week, so a 50 per cent rise would mean a marvellous 180,000 a week, wouldn’t it?

Actually, no. The new weekly sale is 30,000, a fall of 75 per cent. According to Press Gazette, Mr Auckland calls this “a fantastic success”. I’m happy for him, I really am.

Apparently Northcliffe has achieved other “fantastic successes” in Exeter, Lincoln and Scunthorpe by transforming ailing dailies into weeklies.

It’s good that these titles have been reborn as weeklies in difficult times, and 30,000 is a good circulation these days for a weekly. No doubt they will serve as models for other publishers of small dailies.

This certainly isn’t failure, but nor is it “success”. Surely the appropriate word is “survival”.

- GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

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SOS for local journalism

Posted on November 14, 2011 by admin

Should you care that competition from the internet is causing devastating damage to the financial viability of your local newspaper?

And would you care enough to join a group of local business people to take control of the paper?

If you think your local rag is just another business fighting for its place in the market your answer will be no.

But if you value the benefits an independent local news service brings to communities the answer should be a resounding yes to the first question and a “definite maybe” to the second.

The bottom line is, without revenue from advertising and copy sales there will be no money to employ trained journalists on local newspapers as we know them or even on their online equivalent.

Citizen journalism, that much vaunted free substitute, is at best a useful provider of extra information and at worst a spiteful and wildly inaccurate confusion. It cannot be relied on to provide accurate scrutiny of the courts, councils, police and other powerful institutions that affect our lives.

But how are professional journalists to be paid for if, as seems inevitable, the internet destroys local newspapers? Could local business people have a part to play in the revival of local news, either on paper or online?

There is a big problem in talking about this because the newspapers themselves, which should be the prime forum for discussion, are reluctant to cover it.

The industry is dying in silence. Politicians and the national media talk only about ethics, which are of great importance, but as Neil Fowler says, “if there isn’t a news industry to be ethical about, we are somewhat missing the point”.

Mr Fowler, former editor of Which? magazine and the Western Mail and ex-publisher of the Toronto Sun, has spent the past year at Oxford University researching the crisis in the regional press and what he calls the real issue facing journalism – “the current and future funding of general news”.

You can read his findings at the Society of Editors on this link. His most radical suggestion is that local businesses should be encouraged to take over newspapers, in the same way that most professional football clubs outside the Premier League are owned by groups of local business people.

He says the three biggest regional press owners – Johnston Press, Trinity Mirror and Gannett – should be helped to make “an orderly default on their debts”.

“They are stuck in a no-man’s land of inertia,” he says. “Their shares are all very low. The individual parts of their companies are clearly more than the present sums … but their debts are holding them down. They are having to pull as much cash as possible out of their businesses to service those debts – which is in turn causing those businesses long-term damage.

“They have futures as news business brokers, providing print, back office and technology services to the industry ­ but I believe a way of returning titles to local ownership is required.

“The case must be made for the return of the locally-owned news business, supported by local enterprises, so that local engagement is maximised.”

This sounds great in theory, but I can see little prospect of government bailing out the big regional press owners, especially in the light of their monumental errors.  This clearly needs to be put into the public arena before the situation spirals beyond rescue.  We need politicians to take more interest in the local press, look at ways of preserving the independent local news service and start investigating possible forms of ownership.

- GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

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Gimme, gimme, gimme!

Posted on October 24, 2011 by admin

Something amazing is happening in the media, and it’s illustrated this month in the journalists’ trade magazine, Press Gazette.

“Gimme, gimme, gimme! Let’s stop freebie culture” is the headline over a piece by former Take A Break editor John Dale, in which he catalogues blatant greed, not by politicians or celebrities, but ordinary working journalists.

He cites a recent press event, organised by Asda and attended by well over 100 journalists, all of whom were given a £30 voucher. If that sounds to you like an outrageous bribe to ensure favourable publicity, it was shrugged off as a typical “gift bag”.

He doesn’t blame Asda. “They simply tune into the expectations of some journalists, that they should be rewarded merely for turning up and doing a nice, cushy number,” he says.

But then again, “would anyone give £30 to police officers? Or MPs? And if they did, guess who’d lead the lynch mobs. Yes, journalists.”

I have been reading the excellent Press Gazette for longer than I’m willing to admit, and I don’t remember the subject of freebies for journalists ever being treated as a serious issue worthy of ethical discussion.

Companies have been handing out these sweeteners for decades, and journalists have been accepting them without anyone ever openly questioning either their morality or their credibility.

Much has changed in the wake of the phone hacking scandal. Lord Leveson’s inquiry into media behaviour is leading to soul searching by journalists. John Dale argues that he should go back to basics, to the point where it all begins: “Gimme, gimme, gimme.  For many, the not-so-secret Code of Practice.”

We can see this new approach every day in the national press, as newspapers expose each other’s misdoings in a way that was unheard of even a year ago. The code of silence has been broken. Are we at last entering an era of genuine no-holds-barred editorial coverage of the media?  This might be a far more desirable and effective way of moderating press behaviour than state regulation.

- GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

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Falling angels

Posted on October 14, 2011 by admin

When exactly did newspapers stop calling nurses angels?  For years journalists adored them all unquestioningly.

Was there a point when relatives began to notice that Granny was being strangely neglected? I guess there was, but I think the media were slow to spot the change, and now the hospital care of elderly patients has developed into a full-blown national scandal.

It was in my newspaper days around 20 years ago that I first heard a story about a hospital ward on the south coast. A young patient told me she had had been shocked by nurses gossiping instead of taking care of their mostly elderly charges.

I’m ashamed to say I did nothing about it. I could see no way of proving the story and as most people only had good things say about the hospital I guessed this was an isolated case, probably to do with under-staffing.

I forgot about it until a few years later, when I heard another story about the same hospital. An elderly and confused friend had gone in wearing her valuable diamond engagement ring and had come out after a couple of weeks without it.

Again there seemed to be no way of proving its veracity. By then I had left newspapers, and the information was too nebulous to convince an editor that it was worth investigating.

It’s only in the last two or three years that shocking examples of poor care have begun to emerge in the media. In 2008 the Daily Mail, for instance, carried a devastating account of disrespect and neglect by nursing staff in two hospitals and there have been similar reports in other titles.

But yesterday’s report by the Care Quality Commission was the most shocking of all. Spot checks of 100 hospitals revealed that only 45 were fully compliant with the required standards of dignity and nutrition of patients, and 20 fell below legal standards.

“Time and time again,” said the commission’s chairman, Dame Jo Williams, “we found cases where patients were treated in a way that stripped them of their dignity and respect. People were spoken over, and not spoken to; people were left without call bells, ignored for hours on end, or not given assistance to do the basics of life, to eat, drink or go to the toilet.”

Of course there are many examples of wonderful care, but it’s by no means universal. And it’s a grim thought that massive neglect may have gone on largely unreported for up to 20 years.

A handful of newspapers may be entitled to say “I told you so”, but the media in general have not been on the ball. “Staff shortages” may have been a factor here too, and in the drive to cut editorial costs it is worth remembering that investigative journalism may be expensive, but it is essential to life in democratic Britain.

- GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

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Why we still need the Murdoch press

Posted on October 6, 2011 by admin

As an example of how national and local government can screw up, the failure of Britain’s adoption system would take some beating.

And for evidence of why we still need the Murdoch press in spite of everything, take a look at how The Times has campaigned to put this right.

Everyone suspected the system had gone wrong, but no-one did anything, and it has taken some dogged work to expose the cruel truth that through institutional stupidity we have abandoned tens of thousands of children to a life in foster or residential care.

More than 65,000 are stuck in care, while the number of children being adopted has fallen to 3,000. Thousands of couples are eager to adopt babies yet only 60 were successful last year – a truly horrifying statistic.

As The Times points out, “there are prospective mothers and fathers willing to give love, and children in desperate need of it”.  Yet the system persists in making it as difficult as possible for families to adopt.

One of the most outrageous aspects of this is the colour bar preventing white couples from adopting black and Asian children.

The Times approach to the scandal has been refreshingly constructive. Instead of the usual “heads must roll” rhetoric it commissioned Martin Narey, a former director-general of the Prison Service, to write a 20,000-word analysis of the adoption system.

His case was so well argued that the Government appointed Mr Narey as its ministerial adviser on adoption, and yesterday the Prime Minister promised to take action to improve the system.

“How can we have let this happen?” he asked. “We’ve got people flying all over the world to adopt babies while the care system at home agonises about placing black children with white families”.

It will need much more than a party conference speech to change the way we organise adoption. Clear guidelines would be a start, but without enforcement of a new policy the issue will drift and be forgotten.

There are 65,000 children who need the media to stay on the case and make sure David Cameron’s words are turned into action.

GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

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Breakfast at Wetherspoon’s

Posted on September 10, 2011 by admin

If I hadn’t already had breakfast I would be tempted this morning to try my local J D Wetherspoon - you know, that place on the High Street you probably thought was frequented by tragic early morning drinkers.

Thanks to a bizarre interview with the pub chain’s maverick founder and CEO, Tim Martin, on the Today programme, I have completely changed my admittedly rather sniffy attitude to his pubs.

Mr Martin was brought onto the programme’s business slot, not to be interrogated over hot coals, like everyone else, but to be showered with praise.

He was having none of this. He had a political message he wanted to get out and every time the interviewer interrupted him to say how wonderful his business was, the marvellous Mr Martin turned the subject back to the unfairness of the Government’s tax policy.

We were told he had started his business 27 years ago with one pub and now he had 800, and in the past year he had created 2,800 jobs.

“Twenty five pubs close every week at the moment but you have opened 50 this year already. You have closed only two – how are you managing to buck that trend?” asked the normally snappy interrogator Dominic Laurie, who had expected Tim Martin to “share the secrets of his success”.

But Mr Martin had gone onto the show for his own reasons, which had nothing to do with having his ego fanned and everything do with making an important point about taxation. I loved the way he commandeered the interview.

“Well I think we are bucking the trend with difficulty because of Government tax policies, which I have mentioned in our results.  We pay 20 per cent VAT on food sales, for example, and supermarkets pay nothing . . .

“People spend about 40 per cent of their expenditure on food now in pubs and restaurants and I think it’s an important fact for the Government and for the country that pubs generate a lot of tax, and a lot more tax if people go out to a restaurant than if they buy it in a supermarket.

“So in France for example – and this is the key – they now charge 5 per cent VAT inrestaurants and bars in order to encourage people to pay tax.”

But the interviewer had not yet realised his interviewee had hijacked the topic: “But Tim, the irony won’t be  lost on the listeners that you are making money in this environment. You introduced coffee and breakfast, you got clean toilets, you trained your staff, you got in Wi-Fi, you introduced a smoking ban before it came in, you reacted to necessary change and you prospered, why doesn’t everyone else do that?”

Mr Martin ignored him and swept on to his final point about badly organised tax policies: “Our profits have gone down a bit – that isn’t sustainable, and it’s no good either for the country if it’s only Wetherspoon in the pub business which is doing well.”

Brilliant!

I trawled the web for more about Tim Martin and came across this intriguing description of him in The Guardian: “Yet despite his £140m fortune, he clings to an almost destitute image, wandering around in minimally coordinated casual clothes and unkempt hair.”

You can read The Guardian article here, and for the next few days hear the Today interview here.

- GARETH WEEKES,  Deep South Media Ltd.

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Named and shamed

Posted on August 25, 2011 by admin

Am I the only one to feel uncomfortable about a court’s decision to name and shame the silly 16-year-old who typed “Letz start a riot” on Facebook?

There is a 78-year-old legal rule which states that juveniles appearing in a Youth Court should generally not be named in public.

It is a kind and sensible rule that allows offenders to be punished without having their entire lives blighted by a foolish act committed while young and reckless.

The rule was eased in the 1990s. Identifying offenders was allowed where the offending was persistent, serious, affected a large number of people, and where naming might prevent further offences. It was made clear then that using naming and shaming as an additional punishment was unlawful.

So what to do when a daft boy says “Anybody want to start riots in Worcester and Droitwich?”  It sounds bad, and looks worse because it was said in public, but fortunately there were no riots in those places, so no actual harm was done.

Identifying the boy in these circumstances seems an overreaction. Is there anyone alive who did not say something as stupid as this when he was 16?

Did Teresa May, the Home Secretary, who seems to have encouraged this heavy handed treatment, never use wild language as a teenager? Did Linda Griffin, chief magistrate at Worcester Youth Court, not say or do things in her youth which she now regrets?

I name and shame them both.

- GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

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