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    • Posts Tagged ‘reputation’

    Jimmy Saville and the Fleet Street Gravediggers

    October 10th, 2012 | Author: Mark Borkowski
    Savillegate rages on today, with Mike Smith’s impassioned and lengthy
    rebuttal of claims of institutional sexism at the Beeb made over the
    weekend during an hour long appearance on Richard Bacon’s Radio 1 show.
    With accusations of child-abuse against the TV presenter mounting day by
    day, it is becoming apparent that the true character of Saville is
    woefully far removed from the national icon he was considered during his
    life.
    As Seth Godin says: ‘Now that information is ubiquitous, theobligation
    changes. It’s no longer okay to not know.’
    As someone who has spent his career as a custodian of reputations (though
    not, thank goodness, of Saville’s- it’s unlikely I’d be sitting down
    writing this if I were), I’m fascinated by lurid revelations and
    posthumous attacks. Though the staggering extent of Saville’s crimes
    cannot be ignored, the case raises wider questions about stories of a
    similar nature, and why they hold such fascination for journalists.
    Are these corrections of long-held injustice, or are they salubrious paper
    sellers?
    The answer is- it depends. I’d divide the post-hoc tabloid revelation into
    two key types:
    Type 1 consists of pointless (but paper selling) revelations which benefit
    nobody. Usually, the accused is dead AND the circumstance in which they
    operated is now long-corrected. So, for example, when it emerged in 2007
    that Arthur Miller had a secret son who suffered from Down’s syndrome
    locked away in an institution, the way in which it was splashed all over
    the papers was arguably in poor taste, in spite of the moral outrage it
    naturally evoked. Miller was long dead, the son had long since been
    reunited with Miller’s non-disabled daughter, and people with Down’s are
    now treated with considerably more understanding. Why dredge it up at all?
    Type 2 can be hard to distinguish, but it consists of revelations which,
    whilst sometimes over-enthusiastic and morbid, can be justified in that
    they will contribute to the overturning of injustice which continues. In
    these cases, the accused can be dead or alive, so long as the context of
    their misdemeanours still exists. While lurid, the posthumous airing of
    Amy Winehouse’s dirty laundry was useful in so far as it de-romanticised
    alcohol and drug abuse for a generation in which such abuse has reached
    epidemic proportions.
    Jimmy Saville’s victims must have the space to air their grievances. But
    beyond that, the true relevance of this story lies in the extent to which
    it speaks of the culture in the television industry today. Ask the interns and runners of the BBC, ITV et al what goes on in those dressing rooms now. If the answer is less
    than pleasant, then perhaps a bit of collateral luvvie damage is necessary to
    expose the corrupt power systems that comfortable institutions so often
    breed.
    Posted in Mark My Words | Tags: , , , , , , , | No Comments »

    BP: Where PR Fears to Tread

    June 3rd, 2010 | Author: Mark Borkowski

    As BP’s reputation slips further down the plughole, its PR strategy is beginning to look like an envelope without an address on it. The comms department believe big emotions come from big statistics. Lazy damage limitation tactics are fuelling the storm – they should be pouring oil on troubled waters metaphorically rather than allowing it to happen all too literally and panicking about how to respond.

    And that’s the essence of it; the battalions of BP’s PR flaks are doomed because of the failure to fix Ground Zero. There’s a very thin line between success and failure in PR. For every day that the toxic spew gushes from the wound in the pipeline, the PR effort’s sheer futility becomes ever more obvious. If the engineers could only plug the leak, we would be viewing a completely different outcome. Read the rest of this entry »

    Posted in Mark My Words | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

    Risky Business: The Podcast

    February 22nd, 2010 | Author: Mark Borkowski

    For anyone who couldn’t make the event I took part in at the Cass Business School the other week, Risky business: Risk and Reputation, you might like to know that Lloyds and Editorial Intelligence have made a podcast of the discussion, which featured myself, Kamal Ahmed (Business Editor of The Sunday Telegraph), Lord Levene (Chairman of Lloyd’s), Philip Booth (Professor of Insurance and Risk Management, Cass Business School), John Cridland CBE (Deputy Director-General, CBI) and Tommy Helsby (Chairman, Kroll Eurasia). Read the rest of this entry »

    Posted in Mark My Words | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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