Oh, him? He left hours ago

A gentleman I worked with, who shall go nameless, actually wait, scratch that, let's call him Greg Ostertag, recently left the company. On his own accord, mind you, to go work for a PR (no, not those PRs) firm in the city. Ostensibly he'll be doing the same thing he did when he worked for us (the good guys): writing press releases.

Only he wasn't a press agent for us. He was a reporter. As in a person who is supposed to relay facts in an unbiased manner. Well he was certainly unbiased and he certainly relayed "facts," but they were "facts" gleaned from press reports, a habit most reporters are into these days.

As someone who was classically trained in journalism, this is a worrying development that has been growing for some time now. I'm not sure how long it's been going on, but somewhere between newspapers dying and journalists making less jack and more shit, reporters figured out that public relations people can do their jobs for them!

It's especially easy when you're working for a trade publication like moi. PR people are eager to talk to reporters all the time because reporters very happily apply the role of message conduit. So you call up a reporter, feed him the company line, and voila! He has his story, you have your publicity, everyone walks home happy. Except maybe the consumer but who gives a shit?

As for copying press releases, he was good at it. Which I suppose is rather like being an effective nose picker.* It gets the job done, but at what cost????

Journalists outside trade publications do the same thing, more or less. Except this time they get their info from "authoritative sources," which is mainly just the government. Again, if you're a young, dumb reporter and you need to make a deadline, which sounds easier? Asking pointed questions at the appropriate people, figuring who knows what and who's supposed to know what and so on, or just asking the man in the uniform what's up? Is the man in the uniform on the level? Does he acutally know what's going on? Hell if you know, it's 4:30 p.m. and page 7 isn't filling itself!!

So basically, in a nutshell, take everything you hear in the press, in any form, with a grain of salt. A huge grain. Large enough to break the back of a large poodle. I hear they sell those at Costco (the salt, not the poodles).

For this and more information about this subject, consult Nick Davies, who wrote the intriguing "Flat Earth News." It's a book but it's non-fiction so you'll probably pass it up for more navel-gazing artsy shit books. Oh well.

* Greg actually would pick his nose at work, so this comparison is extremely apt.