Damien Mulley

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.