After a quick Google, I found her Twitter page. I remembered that the last time I searched for her, I saw a tweet commenting on how many out of office email replies she’d gotten from council press officers, saying they were lazy and workshy or words to that effect.

A tweet I saw on her Twitter page today made reference to a particular council press office with the comment, “Those that can’t become council press officers.”

I’d like to see her do a day in this press office. It’s not all parks openings and bin collections, you know, although with Pickles on the rampage, the latter is enough to keep us in business most of the time.

Today I’ve dealt with Panorama regarding ID fraud discussing our months of filming with them, BBC TV news about Brent Council winning the judicial review on library closures and organising an interview for them, a child trafficking piece for the Times we worked with the Home Office on following a prosecution that couldn’t have been won without this council and a particularly nasty enquiry from another broadsheet. I’ve also kept my eye on the HS2 debate in parliament, the No to HS2 campaign being a priority for this council.

I of course answered her enquiry quickly and professionally.

As well as these reactive stories, today I’ve met with the Leader of this council to talk about how we can let more old people in the borough know about our schemes to keep them warm in the winter and how we can work with Age UK get them more volunteers.

While I’ve been doing this, my colleagues have been working on more enquiries and pushing stories so we can let our residents know what services we provide and what we’re using their council tax to do.

We deal with enquiries because we get an endless stream of them from journalists and it’s fair and right that we have right of reply, even though our responses to stories are frequently ignored and left out.

This job isn’t glamorous. I’m not trying to get a client’s new nail polish in a magazine or bribing a journalist with a new product or getting them drunk in the hope they’ll write something positive about my company. But what this council does is important.

We are a particularly good press office at this council. And I know that because journalists, as well as other communications professionals, tell us so.

I am fiercely proud to do what I do and take strong exception to anyone who thinks that local government PR is a soft option. It’s really not.

Anyway, that’s my five minute break over. I have another statement to draft before catching the news at 6.30pm for our library story.

Who made us the judge?

What is newsworthy to one person isn’t necessarily to the another. Having said that, the news tends to feed us what we want to hear, whether the story be good or bad. The great Glen was musing about the lack of coverage for the famine situation in Africa on Saturday morning versus the cacophony of rolling news about Norway (much of which was wrong and downright offensive).

Was the situation in Norway perhaps easier for us to hear? After all, there’s not much we can do about a madman on the rampage. It’s much easier to consume that information. It’s one-way. Watching the news about a famine can actually prompt you to do something to help. And who can be arsed with that? Maybe not us. Add to that the fact the people in Norway are a bit like us (white, and in Europe) and you can see why it’s perhaps easier not just to consume, but to identify with the suffering there.

Now compare that to Winehouse. I have no idea if there were more comments on Twitter about her than Norway but I can understand how there can perhaps be more personal empathy. If you are more inclined to sympathise with Norway than Africa then why can’t you be further inclined to sympathise with Winehouse. I think more of us have heard about Amy and have listened to her music than have a connection with Norway. We all appreciate her talent as well as know people who have suffered from addiction. We also know people who have died. Is it easier to identify with a single death of one personality? Perhaps.

Saying this, I don’t think people were more bereft by Winehouse’s death than Norway. They just expressed sorrow and for one reason or another, got picked up on it. Unnecessarily, just like in that picture.

Whatever it is we’re interested in or however we feel, we shouldn’t be made to feel bad about it. But on this I’m with the people expressing their disgust at people’s abhorrant attitudes to addiction and with the people questioning others comparison of Winehouse and Norway. Why bother? I really didn’t understand the point. Was it to make people feel silly for being sad about a young woman’s death? It felt a bit like that. It did nothing other than make people feel bad about their feelings and in some cases, genuine grief.

To decide whether or not all public relations communication is organisational propaganda would first require cast-iron definitions of each term and defining both has always been a problem. The origins of the term propaganda seems to stem from the word propagate which came in the 18th century, from the Latin “propagare” (to propagate). The word relates to “propages” (a slip, a cutting of a vine) and refers to how gardeners produce new plants by planting shoots. So you could say propaganda is a form of communication aimed at “planting shoots” of ideas, or sowing seeds of ideas, with the goal of trying to influence attitudes toward a cause, a position, or a policy.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines propaganda as “any association, systematic scheme, or concerted movement for the propagation of a particular doctrine or practice”. It adds that the propagation of information is carried out “by an interested party, especially in a tendentious way in order to encourage or instil a particular attitude or response”.

Jowett and O’Donnell (2006) define propaganda as the “deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist”. With much of what is thought about propaganda as negative, this definition could give us a good starting point to consider whether all public relations is organisational propaganda. However, there are far too many negative connotations with propaganda to assume anyone can consider ‘propaganda’ as a neutral term.

The first time the term propaganda was used in the sense we understand it now was in the 17^th century Roman Catholic Church, which established the ‘de Propaganda Fide’ to “mobilise talented intellectuals of every sort into a vast social apparatus to persuade men and women all across the globe to believe in Christian doctrine or, if perchance they had fallen astray, to rekindle their faith” (Jackall, 1995). If the Roman Catholic Church was to do this now it may simply be described as public relations.

With the advent of mass media, war rape was used as propaganda to justify colonisation of places and the most notable example was perhaps during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (Beckman, 2003). Here, Indian soldiers rebelled againstBritain’s attempted rule. While rape incidents committed by Indian rebels against British women or girls were uncommon, examples were exaggerated to great effect by the media to justify continued British colonialism in the Indian subcontinent. Stories were printed with little evidence to support them. This media management (or propaganda) was an attempt at changing public opinion much like public relations does today.

The most well known about propaganda in history is arguably that done by the Nazis in the leading up to and during Adolf Hitler’s leadership ofGermany1933-1945. This propaganda was an instrument for power, for the implementation of policies and the extermination of millions of people in the Holocaust. This use of propaganda is partly responsible for the word ‘propaganda’ acquiring its negative connotations (Welch, 1993). To say that Nazi propaganda is public relations would sit very uncomfortably with most people in communications roles today. Hitler later explained his ‘big lie’ theory.

When considering propaganda today, publics may still consider war communication or political party public relations to be propaganda. They may also consider that controversial companies or those that deal with sensitive subjects use propaganda.

Publics may, for example, see public relations undertaken by a power company to be propaganda. For example, as written about in PR Week, 11 December 2009, EDF Energy launched Green Britain Day, an initiative to “help people make long-term, low-carbon lifestyle changes”. However the adverts were criticised and called ‘greenwashing’, given EDF Energy’s heavy involvement in the global coal industry. (Sudhaman, 2009). This example fits well with the dictionary definition of propaganda in that EDF Energy are trying to encourage a particular response about their company. Using Jowett and O’Donnell’s definition you could describe this as propaganda. But are today’s publics too aware to not see the bigger picture, in this case that the company has questionable involvement with the coal industry? After all, media scrutiny of such companies is great and the media can highlight any discrepancies in an organisation’s business.

Hilton (2009) comments how after the World Trade Center terrorist attack in 2001, everything President George Bush wanted to do – from tax cuts for the rich to lifting the ban on oil drilling in the Arctic lands – was wrapped in the flag of defense and homeland security. He says:

“Any critic of tax policy or defender of the environment was branded as unpatriotic. Their credibility was undermined and the merits of what they said got lost… It is a bit of a stretch to say the same thing is happening here (in theUK) but… Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, for example, has emerged as a notable critic of Government fiscal policy. One way of dealing with this would be to engage with King’s arguments on their merits. Instead he has been smeared by those mysterious people “close to the Prime Minister”, who so often appear as a source for stories, as being little more than a stooge for the Tories. Bizarrely, a similar thing happened last weekend to Lord Myners, the former fund manager who is now the minister for the City, in which position he has been a robust critic of what the City does. The smear in his case was a story in last week’s Sunday papers that he is going to study theology – the logic being that is he is drawing his inspiration from God, then one ignore his views on Mammon.”

What Hilton talks about echoes (albeit this are far less severe examples) the war rape stories from the 19^th century. This media management is so done to provoke a negative reaction and to shape a view, regardless of the fact it is negative, in order to achieve (what the perpetrator believes to be) a greater good. What is clear in these examples of propaganda is that there are blatant lies. The organisation in question would argue that their media management is simply public relations. Bearing in mind publics opinion of what propaganda is, these examples of public relations could be viewed as propaganda.

There are examples of where a ‘big lie’ can be used to great effect and the expression was coined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf. He described a ‘big lie’ as a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”. Some 16 years after Hitler’s first use of the phrase ‘big lie’, Joseph Goebbels put together a theory which has come to be more commonly associated with the expression. He wrote the following in an article, “Aus Churchills Lugenfabrik” (translated “From Churchill’s Lie Factory”:

“The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”

It can be argued that these big lies Hitler and Goebbels refer to are propaganda: they are forms of communication aimed at ‘planting shoots’ of ideas, with the goal of trying to influence attitudes toward a cause, a position, or a policy.

So can modern propaganda be described as lying and public relations as truth telling? Even now, public relations professionals question their role and whether it is one of lying and deception. This is highlighted by vows to not lie, which assumes that they admit they sometimes do not tell the truth. As detailed in PR Week, 23 October 2009, one public relations professional attempted to go a whole year without lying. Former journalist Cathal Morrow who has worked at agencies Pielle Consulting and JBA PR, wanted to go 12 months without lying to test German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s belief that lying was always morally wrong. He said:

“We spin our own lives the whole time. And in the long run it harms us in precisely the same way it destroys the reputation of companies, individuals and of course, political parties. I lied all the time in business. Or I manipulated what was partially true for my own advantage. Public relations is an industry with a pretty awful reputation, but the purpose of public relations should be to communicate information, not to manipulate what is true to create a temporarily convenient truth.”

If we assume that there are lies, or ‘big lies’, in propaganda and we accept what Morrow says – “the purpose of public relations should be to communicate information, not to manipulate what is true to create a temporarily convenient truth” – then we can assume that propaganda and public relations are not the same. Propaganda can involve lies and all public relations is truth-telling. Except it is not that simple. Without the cast-iron definitions there still appears to be some crossover because both, in one form or another, seek to manage messages. What Morrow says does not make it clear whether all public relations is organisational propaganda.

Kruckeberg and Vujnovic ask, “Propaganda was central to U.S public diplomacy in earlier times, and it remains central today, but does this centrality serve today’s public diplomacy needs?” They go on to explain that theUnited Statesmust now practice true public diplomacy, which should rely, not only on political theory and the theories of international relations, but also on theories and models of public relations that are based on two-way symmetrical communication and community-building. From this, we can assume that Kruckeberg and Vujnovic think propaganda is one-way communication, whatever the definition. But what about public relations?

Further on, the article talks about an article published in 2001 by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke where he underscored what he believed to be the close link between public diplomacy (or relations) and propaganda. He said:

“Call it public diplomacy, or public affairs, or psychological warefare or – if you really want to be blunt – propaganda. But whatever it is called, defining what this war (on terrorism) is really about in the minds of the one billion Muslims in the world will be of decisive and historic importance.”

The article says Holbrooke talks about the “close link” between public relations and propaganda but reading his quote, it does not appear to me that he cares what the correct definition is. By saying, “whatever it is called”, we can assume it is not the definition that is important to him, but the message. A message is a message, whatever you refer to it as. Looking at whether or not the definitions matter and Holbrooke’s saying, “whatever it is called,” does it matter whether all public relations communication is organisational propaganda? After all, it is the message that matters. Will publics read a message sent from an organisation and consider whether it is public relations or propaganda?

It seems to matter to public relations professionals though as much time is devoted to defining the profession and the terms public relations and propaganda. The early public relations pioneer Bernays recognised the importance of communicating with publics but the difficulty in using the term propaganda. He said: “I decided that if you could use propaganda for war you could certainly use it for peace… Propaganda got to be a bad word because of the Germans using it so what I did was try to find some other word… Public relations.” However, Weaver, Motion and Roper (2006) outline why it matters that public relations should be considered separate from propaganda. They say that while public relations is popularly described as propaganda and spin, the ‘looseness’ of these critical descriptions of public relations are not helpful to the development of a sophisticated understanding and evaluation of public relations as a particular form of communicative practice which purportedly advocates for not only organisational interests but the public interests. The argument can be made that by dismissing public relations as propaganda, labeling it so fails to accurately reflect how it actually comprises part of the legitimate information management machinery of democratic societies. This is especially important when media and publics simply dismiss all government and political communications ‘propaganda’ when they try to communicate important information. Also, a related problem is the fact that the dismissal of public relations as ‘propaganda’ and therefore ‘bad’ reflects particularly pejorative view of the term ‘propaganda’ itself. As L’Etag (1997) noted, this simplistically defines propaganda as lying which by implication, places it in opposition to the truth.  As all of the above suggests, the practice of public relations and propaganda are much more complex than is implied by these black-and-white oppositional terms.

The suggestion that all propaganda is lies and all public relations should be truth telling causes another problem. What is truth? Michel Foucalt (1980) argued: “Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse that is accepts and makes function as true.” So what is truth to one person, or an organisation, may not be to another. However trust is both a precondition and outcome of communication. So whoever is receiving the message must hold some trust with whoever is communicating with them to believe what they are saying and trust will be built with following communication. This can work in favour of organisations as well as publics though if we look at the theory of the ‘big lie’, which is tied closely to propaganda.

I believe that in organisations today, propaganda is so similar to advertising and public relations, which aim to promote a product or service or to shape public perception or image of a product or brand, or of a person, or of the company or organisation itself, that it is impossible to look at them separately. However, this does not mean that they are the same things. Grunig, says that a modern example of propaganda could be a static website. He explains that a website with one-way communication may be able to implement the propaganda model of communication (blogs one-way asymmetrical model and open sites such as Twitter two-way symmetrical models). So companies that are perhaps more cautious about using social media because of negative comment may still subscribe to use what Grunig considers a propaganda model. This ties in with Kruckeberg and Vujnovic who think propaganda is a one-way communication model.

The modern view of propaganda is fairly one-sided and an organisation would be foolish to say, or admit, they use propaganda. However, many organisations use public relations methods and tools­ and would have no qualms in admitting so. However, there are extremes in public relations. Some can manipulate, some companies use it in place of advertising as they think it is more genuine and better value. Some organisations use public relations for truth seeking. Having said all this, organisations that use one-way communication, or as Grunig calls it, the propaganda model, are using what they would consider to be public relations, but not very well. So not all public relations communication is organisational propaganda but it would be impossible to prove it and publics could be forgiven for thinking it is.

Written December 2009.

References

Beckman, K, Vanishing Women: Magic, Film, and Feminism, Duke University Press, 2003

Bernays, interview in ‘The staff of thought’, by Steven Pinker. Viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0OrT-8gXMs

Goebbels, J, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1941

Grunig, J, ‘Paradigms of global public relations in an age of digitalization’, Prism, vol. 6, no. 2, pp1-19, 2009

Hiltson, A, “If all else fails the mud starts flying’, ­PR Week, Haymarket, 24 July 2009

Holbrooke, R, ‘Get the message out’, The Washington Post, 21 October 2001.

Jackall, R, Propaganda,New York City Press, 1995

Jowett, G & O’Donnell, V, Propaganda and Persuasion, 4^th edition, Sage Publications, 2006

Kruckeberg, D & Vujnovic, M, ‘Public relations, not propaganda, for USpublic diplomacy in  post-9/11 world: Challenges and opportunities’, Journal of Communication Management, vol. 9, no. 4, pp296-304, 2005

Sudhaman, A, ‘EDF seeks consumer shop’, PR Week,Haymarket,UK, 11 December 2009

Weaver, C.K & Motion, J & Roper, J, ‘From Propaganda to discourse (and back again)’, The Public Relations Digest, Pearson, 2006

Welch, D, The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda, Routledge, 1993

PR Week, ‘Agency promises to tell the whole truth’, PR Week, Haymarket, 23 October 2009

We used to have four members of staff answering questions from the media where I work. They would take it in turns and on the days when they weren’t dealing with reactive bits and pieces they would work on pushing stories.

Contrary to popular belief, this pushing stories lark doesn’t mean spinning and simply telling residents what wonderful people us public sector folk are (although some of us are, of course). It’s promoting new children’s centres so people know they’re there. A press release sent earlier this week was about activities for teens to do in the summer holidays. Another piece of work was about a free loft insulation scheme to help the elderly reduce their winter fuel bills. We also let people know when our fraud team has contributed to the conviction of a benefit cheat so residents know we’re doing our best to look after their council tax money.

Without the means to tell people about the things we are doing, residents wouldn’t know and what would be the point in these services existing if they sat there unused? There’s also the issue of reputation management.

But now we have two members of staff (and a team assistant we have highjacked) doing the same job four used to. And compared to this time last year, over the last few months we have had a 50 per cent rise in the number of enquiries we’re getting from journalists. So we haven’t just got fewer staff, we’ve got substantially more work. In this new working world, we have two doing the job that the equivalent of six would have done last year.

Having fewer staff and more work wouldn’t be so difficult if the stories we’re faced with didn’t include things like this, this, this, this and this. Once a story gets picked up nationally, there’s no stopping it. The phone rings off the hook and journalists (quite rightly) demand right of reply and put in requests for interviews. For the more sensitive subjects, you need headspace to think about and work on them. Where necessary, you need time to write the strategy so the web team knows what the media relations team is doing and the person stuck in court all day knows things are covered at the office.

Is this change in staffing levels and workload in our communications team indicative of what’s happening across local authorities as a whole? Perhaps.

My colleagues and I are working incredibly hard at the moment but I have a concern that we won’t be able to meet our targets. If the council has decided to cut the communications team, we need to understand that expectations will need to change accordingly.

Unfortunately, this simple logic may not go down so well when it comes to things like children’s social care, meals on wheels, education, learning disabilities carers and the plethora of other services councils provide.

I haven’t meant any of this to sound negative. We are where we are and we will adapt. We have to. And that’s OK because I like a challenge.

So someone referred to your newspaper as a local rag? Hold the front page!

As the big bad defamer and council comms chief John Shewell said earlier today, phoning him would have been preferable to sending an email suggesting he had ‘defamed’ you. The man was correcting something you’d got wrong.

“As to your comment describing the Argus as a “local rag”, the advice from our company lawyer is that the tweet as a whole is defamatory in that it characterises The Argus (and therefore the Editor and individual members of staff) as a “rag” that carelessly or incompetently publishes false or misleading information and is not to be relied on.”

Really, Michael?

Christ, if councils sent tetchy emails to every newspaper that defamed them, servers across the land would be collapsing under the weight of never before seen levels of tetchiness and lawyers would be even richer than they already are. And no one wants that.

If you’re looking for something to report on, there’s lots of lovely stuff here.

Best wishes,

Charlotte

I sent this to the TaxPayers’ Alliance:

“Figures in your ‘rich list’ are wrong. Some include pension contributions, some don’t. Some are part year salaries which you explain in the notes but don’t take account of in the per cent. It is very misleading. For example, it says Hillingdon Council’s deputy chief executive had a 46.1 per cent increase when in fact it was 3.5 per cent. Massive mistake and I assume not the only one. Does anyone check the information?”

In reply I had:

“Thanks for your feedback on the Town Hall Rich List 2011, I have checked the data for Hillingdon and it is correct. We do not twist information and it is all rigorously checked. You might not like the way it is presented but it is part of a consistent methodology to allow fair comparisons between different years and staff.  Here is the full report in case you have not seen original source: http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/thrl2011.pdf

“The notes next to the deputy chief executive’s details on page 145 clearly state that 08-09 figs are a part year salary and give full year equivalent. The percentage increase relates to the two columns to the left of it (total remuneration 08-09 and 09-10) and is correct in keeping with our methodology so there is no correction to be made.”

And then I sent:

“Thanks for the reply.

“I understand what you’ve done but your methodology is wrong – in this one example you are comparing apples with pears unfortunately. Where you have the figure for 2008-09, the part year figure does not include pension contribution which it should do given that the heading for the column is ‘remuneration’ and that you have included it in the 2009-10 column.

“If you are not including pension contributions, the columns should read ‘salary’ and not ‘remuneration’.

“So the figure for the pro-rata salary and pension contribution in column 2008-09 should be £159,420. We are not disputing the figure of £165,000 for 2009-10.

“Whether or not it is your methodology, comparing part year salaries without pension contributions with pro-rata salaries including pension contributions is not only wrong, but very misleading.

“Please make this correction so the percentage increase column reads 3.5 per cent.”

Response:

“The report perfectly represents the information that was available to us, so one (a correction) will not be forthcoming.  We will by all means publish additional information if your council wants to be open with its residents and make possible proper scrutiny of remuneration for all senior staff. But that will not amount to a correction, as there is nothing to correct.

“In many cases staff served only partial years in one of the years studied, leading to high percentage changes. Or we only had partial information. Others received significant redundancy payments. We included the percentage changes for all those in the Rich List to ensure the report was complete but also detailed notes so readers could get the fullest picture we could provide. To complement that, we worked out an average which only included those in post for the full two years.

“Your council’s accounts for 2009-10 are attached. On page 37 the term “Remuneration Band” is used as the header for a table column which delineates the remuneration of staff, excluding pension contributions. So the London Borough of Hillingdon uses the same terminology that the London Borough of Hillingdon is asking us to issue a correction for using.

“Before you start attacking external research perhaps you should check these things over with your finance department, or even better read the accounts yourself. You would find other interesting information like the substantial losses the Borough has suffered from putting its residents’ money in Icelandic Banks – despite clear warnings they weren’t safe. Clearly the council’s senior staff are earning their high pay.

“I will be publishing this e-mail on our website, in the interests of a transparent debate. And residents can decide if the Borough’s significant publicity budget is well spent.”

Me to them:

“Thank you for your email. We are very open with our residents and publish senior staff pay on our website and in our council magazine. The problem is not with this information being available; it is with it being presented in a warped way.

“I take on board your point about the wording of ‘remuneration’ but that still does not explain why the columns in your table give such a different impression to what the reality actually is.

“Burying this information in a large report has the potential to mislead and as you may understand, residents will be very alarmed to read that an officer is having a pay rise of nearly 50 per cent when in fact it was only 3.5 per cent.

“I am disappointed you have resorted to petty comments rather than adequately addressing what are genuine concerns.

“Please do include my replies to your emails on your website.”

“The notes are no less prominent than the increase in remuneration.  They are in the same row of the same table.  We haven’t buried them at all.

“We have just published to our blog, with your earlier reply, and to be honest I don’t think this little exchange is worth adding to that.”

She wanted to know how prepared I (and other CIPR members) felt for its potential impact and how we, as professional communicators, can help shape the new landscape, contribute to the debate and prepare ourselves and the organisations that we work with for the inevitable challenges it will present. This was for a debate with Claire Cater of Bell Pottinger and you can watch it here.

Inevitable challenges? If only. I can’t see any yet. If central government bothers to tell us what this Big Society is then maybe local government could get involved and start telling residents what it means for them.

My understanding of the Big Society is that it was a pre-election piece of PR spin dreamt up by Steve Hilton, a strategy director for the Conservatives. It hasn’t meant much so far. Communities minister Eric Pickles is promising councils more freedom but giving us less money while also pushing for greater restrictions on council magazines, a key part of our communications mix. He wants his localism both ways.

Let’s imagine for a moment that something’s actually going to come out of this Big Society malarkey. How prepared are communications professionals for the impact? As prepared as we can be when the organisation I work for is having its funding from central government severely cut. The communications team I work in is going from 21 posts to 16 and from four people dealing with public relations down to just two.

The idea of the Big Society may come in helpful when we have to explain to people why we are making cuts and why people have to do more for themselves. However, this, from an article in New Statesman from April last year, is interesting:

“There is… the unanswered question of whether the “big society” will be popular. Asked at his manifesto launch where the evidence is that people want to be “prised away from the telly” in order to run public services or their local communities, Cameron could only dismiss the cynicism of the questioner and profess “profoundly” to believe that people want to be more involved in running their schools, hospitals and the rest. “The trouble with socialism,” Oscar Wilde is said to have once remarked, “is that it takes up too many evenings.” Cameron’s “big society” gamble could face the same challenge.”

Some of this was proved last week when the man charged with working on the Big Society gave up his post ‘after discovering that working for free three days a week is incompatible with “having a life”.’ You can read about that here. If the man Cameron wants to kickstart the Big Society can’t do it, who can?

Are people really interested in getting involved? Will they care? If they are, that’s where communications will need to step in and support them. I’m looking forward to seeing how things pan out but for now, I’m sceptical.

I work in local government communications so am biased, both in the sense that I could lose my job but also in that I see the difference good council communications can have on people’s lives.

Good communication can make the difference to an old person who, without knowing about their council’s free heater scheme, would be freezing in the winter when their electric fire breaks down. It can also mean one less bored teenager if they know about their local free youth activities.

As well as this type of proactive work, I believe it’s only fair there are officers to deal with the mauling councils get in the press and as local government embraces new communications channels such as Twitter and Facebook, there needs to be staff to manage them.

On top of these tasks, we’re also going to have to guide both staff and council tax payers through the big changes happening in local government.

The team I work in is just about to undergo a restructure and our consultation ends tomorrow. The proposed restructure suggests cutting five posts and I’m accepting that this is broadly what will happen.

Our restructure doesn’t just cover public relations, which is what I do. It includes cutting our e-communications manager post and making significant changes to the roles that will be left.

I agree with most of the proposed changes, but whichever way you cut it, we’re going to have less people and yet we’re expected to up our game. So what does the future hold?

I understand that as with many teams in many types of organisation, local government communications need to constantly review the service they provide and change where necessary. I certainly don’t think communications should be saved at the expense of other staff such as social workers, housing advisors or council tax collectors.

But with fewer resources, are we still going to be able to run the campaign to recruit the social workers, produce the brochures explaining the complex system of social housing and update the website to tell you how to pay your council tax? And are we going to be able to effectively communicate the changes that these cuts will bring so people are prepared for the potentially massive upheaval ahead?

Time will tell.

What a stupid thing to do.

Working in public sector PR often means you just have to take it. You might not like it but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Yes, you fight your corner but, as with all PR, you know when to shut up.

What you don’t do is get visibly annoyed about it. Your job is to right the wrongs and try and communicate the correct message. If ITV News was critical about the investigation, then the police should attempt to hammer home the message about what they’re doing and why they’re making the decisions that they are.

Of course, in a case like this, there will always be things we aren’t told and I think everyone can appreciate why that is. Regardless, tell us what you can about what you’re doing and why. And keep telling us.

What the police media relations team should have done is invite the journalist in for a cup of tea and a one–on-one briefing. Talk to them. Be candid. There will be injunctions and rules and regulations flying about all over the place so ITV will know what they can and can’t report on. Don’t let them speculate. Try and help them understand. Even background knowledge they can’t report on will help keep their story straight and their reporting more fair.

Avon and Somserset police were within their right to lodge a complaint with Ofcom saying that they believed ITV’s story to be “unfair, naïve and irresponsible reporting”. But they shouldn’t have banned them from a press conference. Very few will care about this complaint or even about what ITV News said yesterday. But they will be looking for yesterday’s news report.

Anyway, I’ve only gone and written some rules of my own! Exclamation mark!

Here they are:

Rule one: Never tweet about a new relationship. It’s probably all going to go tits up and if you’re tweeting about the lovely honeymoon stage, you’re almost certainly going to tweet about the break-up. Spare us.

Rule two: Never tweet about a date or a one night stand. If you’re writing about it in under 140 characters, one will almost certainly look like the other. Again, spare us.

Rule three: Don’t ever, ever sleep with anyone who breaks rules one or two. Spare yourself.

Ignore these rules (especially rule three) at your peril.