Another gobshite wants to regulate Irish Blogging

Simon Palmer from Republic PR, come on down. People are saying things on the Internet that he can’t control.

Simon wants a code of conduct and a watchdog for those that blog. I bet he’d also like women to lose that vote that we gifted them with recently.

Ideally, the Irish blogging sector should have a professional membership body with a code of conduct. Even better, they could come under the remit of a watchdog for blogs that would have a role similar to an ombudsman.

Simon suggests he contacted Irish bloggers to have coverage about a client removed. Can those bloggers he contacted step forward?

These days, though, news spreads fast, so the story was quickly on the blogs. When I started to contact those blogs, I presumed they would also want to ensure the information they were covering was correct.

The reaction, however, was surprising. The majority of bloggers couldn’t have cared less whether the details they’d printed were accurate or not.

How many bloggers? I’m thinking he contacted a dozen the way that’s phrased.

They seemed to think they had turned into Ireland Inc’s answer to Perez Hilton just because they were writing a blog. Others justified passing on inaccurate information by saying that they were repeating what had been written in the papers, which is simply passing the buck.

So come on folks. Can the Irish Perez Hiltons step forward and show us the emails that Simon Palmer sent you? No comments by Simon on any blogs either. Blogging relations 101?

The bit of the article I find most troubling and actually sinister is how Simon goes about his business with the media:

It allows me to bring them closer to the story by giving them‘‘ off the record’’ information, or details on an ‘‘unattributable basis’’, confident that I am protected by their professional standards and that what is agreed as off the record and unattributable will remain exactly that.

Unfortunately, this is not something I can feel confident of when dealing with most blogs.

Yeah bloggers have a low tolerance for bullshit and fakery I suppose. How sneaky is that? What a cynical way of dealing with the media. That’s the complete opposite to transparency and openness.

I’m not at all surprised it was someone from the PR world that wrote this. If ever there was an industry all about control, it’s this one. Well it used to be actually. Thank god this is changing though. It’s great to see so many Irish PR companies embrace the new ways of doing business and communicating. Many of those that have yet to do so are asking how to do it and are going about educating themselves. Not all though. Some seem to want to lock the doors and windows of their firm and hope that web thing will go away. Slightly embarassing too that the PR Institute of Ireland was all hip and cool by including a Twitter question in a recent exam. And getting it oh so wrong. Still, they tried.

I know, let’s censor and create a special code of conduct for PR companies that they have to tell 100% of the truth and can’t do the shadow lurking off-record bits anymore just because one of them is clueless. Yes, let’s rail against 1000s for one of them being a fool. Oh right yeah, that’d be stupid.

The Republic PR website is a hoot too. Check out their balog. Love this phrase too.

Marketing over the internet is a critical part of any companies marketing

Who the fuck wrote it? Marketing over the Internet. Is that MoIP like VoIP?

Update: The PRII have their AGM next week. Head along to Jurassic Park and spot a brontosaurus.

Tommy has his say.

54 Responses to “Another gobshite wants to regulate Irish Blogging”

  1. Robert: Anyone that hides behind a dodgy proxy server like “David” and uses fake credentials while claiming defamation on behalf of another rings the crank bell for me.

  2. Hi Robert, ( Damien )

    Sorry, it was not my intention to insult anybody here, i am merely making observations.

    Ok: If you look at the title of this post “another gobshite” (this clearly refers to Simon Palmer) this alone might be considered slightly offensive and a clear indication as to the response damien wanted to generate from you Robert and the rest of his proxies.

    After that the mood is set and the whole thread just degenerates into an attack by Mulley communications inc, against what is an obvious business competitor.

    But to try and get back to the debate Simon tried to create:

    Any fair minded person would think he is entitled to raise any topic and expect to be able to engage with other bloggers in a mature debate, not to have his character ridiculed in public.

    For these reasons i think bloggers perhaps need to have some code of conduct, as everyone is entitled to maintain their reputation even if they want to express and opinion that is different to others on this blog.

    So please engage the ball and not the man….

  3. Concubhar says:

    I think if you want to be taken seriously, David, about your aspirations to play the ball not the man, you should take a leaf out of your own book and stop referring to people who have criticised Simon Palmer’s contribution as ‘Damien’s Proxies’. I found Simon’s outburst to be naive and childish and that he didn’t illustrate an understanding of the online media world or the traditional media. The standards which apply in the online media sphere are as least as good as those which allowed print journalists throughout the world in many leading newspapers attribute a false made up quote to Maurice Jarre simply by sourcing it from Wikipedia. I don’t know of any proxy for Damien here – and while I appreciate that you may feel offended by the headline of this thread, you’re merely playing the man when you call people with whom you happen to disagree ‘proxies’.

  4. “If you look at the title of this post “another gobshite” (this clearly refers to Simon Palmer) this alone might be considered slightly offensive and a clear indication as to the response damien wanted to generate from you Robert and the rest of his proxies.” – Ah, I vaguely assumed that you meant defamatory in the legal sense, and not in the rather more fluffy ‘being mean to people’ sense.

    As to be being one of Damien’s ‘proxies’, well, the fucking cheek of you!

    “For these reasons i think bloggers perhaps need to have some code of conduct, as everyone is entitled to maintain their reputation even if they want to express and opinion that is different to others on this blog” – If one expresses stupid opinions in public, then one must put up with people laughing at the stupid opinions. Newspapers do this too, by the way; see, for instance, editorials about the budget and/or opposition parties eccentric notions of what to do about the budget.