The Tony Jaques issues management newsletter (see last blog) on the Minerals Council’s inept coal campaign was recently re-published on Mumbrella, and perhaps predictably, prompted a variety of responses.

The blog also got some comments about allegedly disparaging PR (would the blog do that?) by endorsing Tony’s views. The comments directed to the blog were in person because, as regular readers will know, the blog has switched off the comments function after making the mistake of reading a few of the comments on its old crikey column. read more

The recent Minerals Council of Australia coal campaign – ‘the amazing little black rock’ effort – is probably an odds on favourite to be judged the worst PR campaign of 2015.

The reason was summed up in Dr Tony Jaques most recent Managing Outcomes newsletter when he pointed out that “what coal really needs is an effectively targeted issue management strategy, not a ‘PR battle’ they are almost certain to lose.” See read more

Will we all be marching arm in arm in London chanting Je suis Rupert? Unlikely as it seems a Murdoch publication The Times Literary Supplement has recently published two articles about the re-discovered Birmingham Qur’an text which do have the potential to upset some Muslims even if not quite as much as the Charlie Hebdo cartoons did. read more

While media critics focus on the doomsday scenarios for print media it is easy to forget that newspapers face two crises: the business crisis and the journalism crisis.

Ross Gittins has written a sort of autobiography – Gittins: A life among budgets, bulldust and bastardry. It’s a great insight into how a Salvation Army kid became an outstanding economics editor respected by Reserve Bank Governors, Treasury officials and others. But, more importantly, it provides an incisive commentary on the twin problems of what’s wrong with journalism and the newspaper business – subjects which tend to be regarded in isolation rather than as inextricable aspects of one problem. read more

One should never be surprised by what might happen in politics.

After yesterday morning’s post the blog received a bit of feedback about the likelihood or unlikelihood of the ALP putting aside attacks on Malcolm Turnbull for a while and offering to work with him.

While it never occurred to the blog that’s what would happen it is exactly what did. Bill Shorten,  in his parliamentary comments addressed to the new PM, made an offer to work with the government to address national issues. He then subsequently wrote offering to meet to discuss the China-Australia free trade agreement. The latter made it into the media but the former didn’t. read more

The ALP leadership has almost reflexively – but probably more in panic – started to attack the new Prime Minister within minutes of him being elected.

However, even if they make a few dents here and there the odds are he will still be more popular among voters than Bill Shorten and the blog hesitates to think about the Shorten debacle that pre-election TV debates between Malcolm and Bill are likely to be. More importantly, instant attacks overlook the reality of the honeymoon period Turnbull will experience partly as a result of the community relief that Abbott has gone. read more

Increasingly political PR people resemble James Jesus Angleton – the infamous CIA counter espionage head – who probably did more harm to the CIA than any other single individual.

Angleton disappeared into a vast conspiratorial web created by his obsession with what things really meant. If The Russians did one thing what were they really trying to signal? If I work out what they were trying to signal, he thought, then perhaps the hidden message was actually the real disinformation. In Angleton’s defence he spent much of his later career recovering from the shock that his good friend Kim Philby was a spy for the Russians – and Angleton didn’t even have the benefit of thinking, like Philby’s English colleagues, that “one of us” could be unsound. read more

Around the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th anarchists were great believers in the propaganda of the deed. Bombs, assassinations and so on were deeds which also acted as propaganda and promotion of the cause.

In reality the concept was old and the phrase was actually just a new way of framing actions. Similarly, over centuries rebels, fighters for freedom and defenders of the status quo fought over just how to frame the other sides’ actions. This was exemplified by the comment that one person’s terrorist was another’s freedom fighter as illustrated by the differing views of Nelson Mandela or the American Revolution. read more