Media's lost art of public debate keeps Trump in power
Howard Kurtz, former Washington Post columnist, says the woke mainstream media let President Trump off the hook in his first term because they dodged debate and indulged in invective and hate. Here I review Kurtz's book 'Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War over the Truth'.
Give a big fat no to the concept of unconscious bias
The concept of unconscious bias suggests that an audience's supposedly irrational viewpoints require a psychological solution to a pathological condition. This is a useful prejudice when campaigners, corporations and governments find persuasion, even when using their best arguments, ineffective.
Opinion piece on the demise of Bell Pottinger
Regardless of the strength or sustainability of a client's messaging, every client, even an oligarch or dictator, is entitled to pay someone to formulate them in the best possible light. Whatever the client or issue a PR tackles, though, telling lies and resorting to deception is not acceptable.
How Sundar Pichai perpetuates stereotypical myths about women
Google CEO Sundar Pichai's memo entitled 'Our words matter' claims if a man employed by the company writes or says something women find offensive regarding their gender, Google's women start 'hurting' and 'worrying' every time they enter a room or open their mouth to speak. How patronising is that?
Google is wrong to shut down debate about diversity
A Google employee who wrote a controversial memo, which accused the "don't be evil" employer of “silencing” views and creating an authoritarian “ideological echo chamber”, has had his points proven by getting fired.
Pronoun police wage war on London Underground
The right to refine our identities and live freely is the Bowie factor that has always wowed me. But, however legitimate or previously suppressed, this does not give minority groups the right to impose norms.
German media scores own goal in the Culture Wars
The Hamburg Media School said that the fear of being seen as morally bad, helped create a ‘Schweigenpirale‘ (spiral of silence) and a media echo chamber encased in a ‘Filterblase‘ (filter-bubble), which ignored or demonised critical voices. This profound lack of objectivity on the part of German med
PR manifesto for combatting the Culture Wars
Under pressure from the Culture Wars the PR business is mostly leading clients in the wrong direction. So here is a PR manifesto that offers ten recommendations - on the key issues of the day - to make corporate culture and communication more robust and sustainable.
The Culture Wars: a PR perspective
Throughout the modern world identity politics and victim culture have sparked competitive clashes. The world is also increasingly divided between "Anywheres" and "Somewheres". This short essay examines how the public relations industry could help unify society.
Bell Pottinger South Africa, a reality check
What we are not being told in the media is that it was not the ruling ANC or Bell Pottinger which first used the term white monopoly capitalism. It was coined by the South African Communist Party, long-time partners of the ANC, during the apartheid era. There's humbug at play.
A brave new world for mass communication
The success of both BREXIT and Trump tells us that the world is changing. Their triumphs mark a transformation of the public's mood, which is causing the rules governing media schmoozing and managing relations with the masses to be rewritten.
Co-op: the real fraud is ‘ethical banking’
The Co-op Bank's claim to be more ethical than its rivals was always fraudulent. Its fallen Chairman Reverend Flowers fitted the woke call for firms to appoint role models whose credentials were that their morals were stamped on their dog collars, skin colour, NGO or party membership cards.
