Monday, 3 April 2006

Pay to play, the PR way

Interesting article in yesterday's Sunday Times: Catfight at the 'backscratch club'

It details how a well connected PR "guru", Julia Hobsbawm, set up Editorial Intelligence (EI) and invites columnists to advise companies in return of a £1,000 pa fee and organises relationship events to make all those people connect. It doesn't get much closer to bribing...

Of course, Hobsbawm claims that "We are not selling access to journalists. Nor are we asking journalists to write puff pieces for clients.” but one would be naive to imagine that a columnist would not return a call after a "Caribbean freebies".

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