The “custard pie” that landed in Rupert Murdoch’s face at yesterday’s Commons Committee “interrogation”, added a farcical element to the whole News of the World Phone Hacking Scandal, but by doing so diffused some of the hostility directed towards the News Corporation Chairman and Chief Executive. This mindless act singlehandedly did more in terms of favourable PR for Rupert Murdoch than any endless amount of press releases produced by PR agency Edelman, newly appointed to counter the crisis by News Corporation.

Forget Corrie, Eastenders, Emmerdale or Hollyoaks – “The Fall of the Murdoch Empire” has been the best soap opera on TV in the last two weeks. Ironically as the curtain was falling on the BBC2 series “The Kennedys”, a US soapstyle mini series about great wealth, power and politics that ultimately corrupts and comes back to haunt and destroy the family…….what do we find, but history repeating itself with “The Murdochs”!! A number of media pundits have likened the saga to William Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, with Rupert Murdoch in the lead role as an arrogant, bombastic old man caught in a raging storm, but equally you could liken the drama to “Hamlet”, where “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” or in this case “something is rotten in the culture of News Corporation”!! There is clearly an endemic cultural malaise within News International’s tabloid titles and Rupert Murdoch can try and distance himself from any hands on involvement owith the News of the World and The Sun, but the Chief Executive and founder of any organisation creates and moulds the culture of that organisation. (more…)

This post is filed under: Brand Marketing, Media, Newspapers, PR / Crisis Management, Public Relations

When a newspaper becomes the news, it is worrying but surely not necessarily terminal?!! Progressively throughout 2011, News International and the News of the World have come to dominate the headlines of the print and broadcast media in the UK and further afield. The great irony is that the News of the World, the standard bearer when it came to exposure of private and public scandals, has become the centre of a media expose and scandal, championed by the Guardian, as a result of how it went about it’s investigative journalism!! The expression, “Live by the sword, die by the sword” springs to mind, but nevertheless was it not a gross overreaction to close a national newspaper and iconic brand that was completely central to the fabric of British culture?!! (more…)

This post is filed under: Brand Marketing, Media, Newspapers, PR / Crisis Management