Vacuum. Spin issue

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PR AND THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH

BELFAST'S NEW LOGO REPUBLICAN PR MAYOR PR ALAN ABLE JIM MORAN

Featuring...

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Putting on the Mayor face

By Eric Tate

Why would you ever want to be Lord Mayor of Belfast? Perhaps, as a child, you paid attention to the local news and stared in perplexed awe at the talking heads; as you progressed into young adulthood this fascination, conceivably, led you to party activism, whereupon your enthusiasm to improve the lives of your fellow citizens propelled you into the murky world of local government.

It wasn’t just your dedication to civic duty that garnered the respect of your peers across the political spectrum, but your integrity, your jurisprudence, and above all your honesty; for truly you are a politician cut from a different cloth! Election by the City Council to the position of the Right Honorable Lord Mayor of Belfast is your privilege; elevation to the municipal pantheon your birthright! Yes! Finally, as first citizen, a chance to wield ultimate power for the benefit of all peoples of

this metropolis! You shall start your swingeing changes by... er... opening the Garden Gourmet day in Botanic Park.

You might have to jump over a woman dressed as a tomato as well. Try not to hurt her. Please.

You have to wonder at the motivation of a politician whose ambition is to take on an almost exclusively ceremonial role. Just when do you decide to swap direction of municipal charges for a pretty much politically impotent position? The job mostly entails promotion of the city to anyone who will pay attention, greeting celebrities who get tricked into coming here and hanging around civic functions munching canapes. Oh yeah- they get to read “a passage from the Scriptures� at the opening of Council meetings as well. The Community Telegraph is the paper of record for mayoral goings-on; pick one up and prepare to be staggered

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by the pointlessness. Since First citizens parties. There are no Alistair Campbellare last in the queue when real power style communication strategists ensuring is handed out, they seem to be allowed they Page stay on-message; although with the vacuum carnival:Layout 1 23/10/08 16:17 1 to run feral by their respective political exception of Sinn Fein, do any of the other

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bit of pavement earlier this year; in an interview with Seamus McKee on Good Morning Ulster (essential listening for the early riser) Jim managed to classify disabled folk as a separate species, claiming that footpaths were difficult for disabled people to negotiate as well as “human beings”.

Which brings us neatly to the aforementioned tomato. The opening of garden fetes, jumble sales and the like are meat and potatoes to our mayor, so naturally one would be inclined to jump at the chance to liven up the ribboncutting, and jump he did, as Jim was talked into leaping over council colleague at the Gourmet Garden event last year.

Jumping colleagues, I’m sure, is nothing unusual within the confines of council offices, but to jump over a giant human/ tomato hybrid is a photo opportunity no Press Association photographer is going to miss. Alas, Jim’s aim was not as good as the photographer’s, and the “humato” suffered a slipped disc after an unfortunate connection with an indeterminate part of Right Honorable lower limb. Ouch.

Perhaps Jim has disproved the old maxim that politics is showbusiness for ugly people; politics is showbusiness for ugly, inarticulate and dyspraxic people. Proof, if it was needed, was Jim’s attendance at the Belfast heats of X Factor, where he got goosed by Sharon Osbourne. Carry On, Councillor! Carry On!

+

An exhibition of Art and Design works by artists from Lawrence Street Workshops & invited guests

from 12pm-7pm £3 Entry

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in the Hole/ House of Horro rs y Swing Boats Circus Frea / Hustlers & ks Carnie Usheret s / Refreshm

parties have communication strategists at all? This accounts for the occasional monumental PR fuck up, and as the mayor is a publicity-hungry beast, there are usually plenty of eager hacks to pick over its clumsy carcass.

Previous gaffes by the big chief include Eric Smyth and his freestyle approach to grammar in 1995. The inability of our council politicians to string a lucid sentence together is nothing unusual, but you’d think you’d up your game whenever global media are present to watch Bill Clinton turn on your Christmas lights. A particularly delightful slice of schadenfreude was served in 1996 when we were presented the sight of former mayor (and current Environment minister) Sammy Wilson and, um... his Sammy Wilson Jnr in the pages of the Sunday World. Martin McGuinness proved timing is the secret to comedy by joking about it in the Northern Ireland assembly, oh, only 12 (that’s twelve) years later.

The king of calamity, however, has to be Jim Rodgers, a man so keen to speak to the media one newspaper ironically refers to him as “publicity-shy”. Most recently Jim has been throwing his weight around by refusing to sign off the original design of Belfast’s new logo, but to be fair to Jim, he might have caught on that the image consultants, Lloyd Northover, have been flogging that heart-shaped letter B to any city council with the same initial. Always keen to dish out a soundbite, aul Jim managed to slip up over a

ents and much

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ARTIFICE

Contemporary Art Exhibition Lawrence St Workshops

Opening 27th November 7pm-9pm

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by colin graham

HEADING the new branding of Belfast

The branding of towns and cities in Britain and Ireland has one continual and worn-out reference point – Glasgow’s 1983 campaign ‘Glasgow’s Miles Better’, which used nothing more than this phrase, plus Roger Hargreaves’ Mr Happy to reinforce the miles/ smiles pun, to persuade citizens, tourists and investors that Glasgow was misunderstood. By 1989 Glasgow was ‘Alive’, rather than smiling, or dead, but the ‘Miles Better’ tagline was reintroduced in the 1990s and still occasionally makes appearances today.

Belfast’s version was ‘Belfast is Buzzing’ (as does a bee – keep the bee in mind, reader, for it has returned). And like the many lives of Glasgow’s Mr Happy, the buzzing of Belfast goes on long after the campaign ended. Tourist literature about Belfast, both commerical and in newsprint (The Independent, International Herald Tribune, for example), still uses the alliterative BB phrase to describe the regeneration of post-Troubles Belfast.

The BBC (which might have a vested interested in the catchiness of repeated Bs) still uses Belfast is Buzzing as a hook (followed by the bewildering statement ‘It’s full of culture’). Apparently a Junior Minister in the NIO once suggested that Derry should adopt ‘Londonderry is Leaping’ as a counter to Belfast’s buzz, showing a fairmindedness on his part as regards the second city, and a grasp of the alliterative principle involved in the science of PR, though he might have remembered that not everyone in Derry alliterates the first initial of the city as an L.

When I was employed by Queen’s University a few years ago there was much puff about the new corporate logo and staff were invited to a launch presentation by the designers.

The first event was cancelled because of fog at Heathrow, I seem to remember.

The designers eventually turned up and unveiled ... a Q. Which is a clever use of an initial, and not a reference to Spike Milligan’s surrealist tv comedy show. Rumour had it that the Q cost £1million, though this might have been a campus myth. In any case, the university should be glad the designers didn’t opt for the more recognisable QUB, which would presumably have been three

times the price. The Q was such that if the university had put it on a stand on University Road cars would have pulled in for petrol.

Now Belfast has a B, designed

by Lloyd Northover. The B replaces the feeble extended f in Belfast which doubled as a smile with two eyes hovering above, making it a sheepish grin

rather than a Glasgow smile (which itself replaced the Glasgow kiss, possibly?).

The B, as well as following the now wellestablished practice of using an initial letter, is also a heart (with connotations of ‘warmth and vibrancy’, according to Lloyd Northover’s market research, and with no reference to the levels of heart disease in Northern Ireland). This in

itself is not a very original moment in the history of city-branding, deriving from Milton Glaser’s famous I ♥ NEW YORK campaign of 1977. Even less original is the B as the initial letter of a town/city which is made to look like a heart. As the Design Research Group point out Blackburn and Barrow both have a more or less identical B/heart as

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their logo. All three were designed by different companies and all three were launched this year (and all three look very similar to the heart replacing the ‘a’ in BB Saunder’s logo for Heart FM).

Blackburn paid £60,000 for their heart. In the previous Vacuum Daniel Jewesbury wrote about his Freedom of Information request to Belfast City Council on the cost of their design. The information which he got in response suggests that BCC will spend £180,000 for their B/heart, with the overall cost (not all met by BCC) rising to £250,000 when ‘rollout’ is taken into account.

In addition to the B Belfast also got a specially ‘bespoke’ font for the project called ‘Moment’ (because, as Lloyd Northover like to say, ‘This is Belfast’s moment’). Actually the bespoke font seems to be daringly close to being a mixture of two Chalet fonts (Paris 70, with a few Paris 60 letter scattered through it), which were developed specifically for advertising purposes. Chalet’s names for the differing versions of his fonts, such as Paris, New York, Tokyo and London, can now have Belfast 00 added to the list, and you can download the font if you wish to start using it in a fit of civic pride, though, given its rather bulbous shapes, your prose will take on the aura of a teenager who puts little circles rather than dots above each i.

Lloyd Northover didn’t do the Queen’s Q but I do wish that they had been asked, because their work with universities is fantastically corny. Much as Belfast, Blackburn and Barrow all ended up with hearty Bs, so the University of Manchester and the University of Bedfordshire each got a similar treatment, involving in each case a rendering of part of their name in a different colour, creating a word within a word. So for Bedfordshire it was the ‘for’ (rather than ‘bed’), which could then have ‘innovation’, ‘support’ and so on placed cunningly underneath it. In Manchester’s case it wasn’t the hidden words ‘man’ or even ‘chest’, which would have been interesting, but ‘est’, to which is appended, underneath, 1824, showing how old the institution is. Obviously Lloyd Northover feel they are on to something here, in this condensation of syntax, and so they have made the Belfast

The new Belfast B is not, then, very original. Nor is it distinctive. And whatever spin we might wish to cut through, whatever blandbrand is attached to Belfast, don’t we all Y Belfast enough not really want it to B like Blackburn and Barrow?

ISEA2009 PRE-SYMPOSIUM 10 - 14 NOVEMBER 2008

B work as a multivalent verb. The Lloyd Northover final pitch to the city council depicts the B on one of Harland & Wolff’s cranes, where it’s ‘B on top’. And on a bus, ‘B moved’. The possibilities open out.

The PSNI could use it on all their vehicles: ‘B special’ would be good.

The new Belfast B is not, then, very original. Nor is it distinctive. And whatever spin we might wish to cut through, whatever bland-brand is attached to Belfast, don’t we all ♥ Belfast enough not really want it to B like Blackburn and Barrow? Let’s return to the

best branding of the city, the one snuck in by Bill Drummond (he of the burning of £1million on Jura) when he attached the ‘TWINNED WITH YOUR WILDEST DREAMS’ sign to ‘WELCOME TO BELFAST’ on the M1. Then we can bring out the ‘elf’ in Belfast.

Go to www.isea2009.org for further detailed information on symposium sub-themes, broader ISEA2009 activities and information on how to submit your paper/project proposal.

www.isea2009.org info@isea2009.org Hosted by University of Ulster in association with Dun Laoighre Institute of Art, Design & Technology

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by sheldon rampton

The Internet and Propaganda In their groundbreaking 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent, professors Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky not only explained, but documented with extensive case studies, how mass media and public opinion are shaped in a democracy.

Twenty years later, can their "propaganda model" still be used to explain modern media distortions?

The "propaganda model" that Herman and Chomsky put forward in Manufacturing Consent has made the book notable (some would say notorious) as the most influential book by serious academics to challenge the common dogma of media objectivity in the United States. When it first appeared, it was almost unheard-of to suggest that U.S. media such as the New York Times, Time and Newsweek magazines and CBS News were propaganda vehicles.

Today things are somewhat different. Across the political spectrum, there is a widespread belief that disinformation, deception and propaganda pervade the media. On the internet, the initials MSM have become a standard term of disparagement for untrustworthy "mainstream media." The right has in fact far surpassed the left at denouncing the myth of media objectivity and has developed an entire industry of think tanks, media watchdogs and pundits such as Michelle Malkin or Anne Coulter who devote themselves to discovering and denouncing purported instances of media bias — while enjoying privileged media access themselves.

The rise of propaganda during the 20th century in part reflected the cultural and political effects of two world wars as well as the Cold War. It was reflected the culmination of the industrial revolution and the dominance of certain specific communications technologies — newspapers, radio, television — capable of mass-producing and broadcasting messages for public consumption. As the word "manufacturing" in Manufacturing Consent suggests, the mass media throughout the 20th century were largely based on a model of mass production similar to the assembly lines and railroads of the industrial revolution: a command-and-control system overseeing the production of messages that emanate outward from major hubs. This model was envisioned metaphorically in the now-iconic logo of RKO Pictures, which depicted a huge radio tower atop the earth, from which messages radiated electronically to the planet.

These were the technologies and political forces that defined the media when Manufacturing Consent was writ-

ten. In 1988, cable and satellite television had only recently emerged as important media and were only briefly mentioned in the text of the book, while the internet was not mentioned at all.

Today, in place of "broadcasting" we hear increasingly of "narrowcasting."

Rather than a single mass audience consuming the same broadcast information, we have multiple audiences, interests, and information channels. The emergence of new communications media challenge the propaganda/broadcast model by increasing the number of channels through which information reaches the public, and also by lowering the costs of entry to previously-excluded voices. On the internet in particular, blogging, virally-distributed email and collaboratively-written wikis have changed the traditional distinction between "broadcaster" and "audience."

Instead of relying on "one-to-many" broadcasts, people can now get information through "one-to-one" and "many-tomany" systems in which they themselves choose and create their own media from diverse sources.

In Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky state that "the cost of machinery alone, of even very small newspapers, has for many decades run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars" and call this "the first filter—the limitation on ownership of media with any substantial outreach by the requisite large size of investment."

On the internet, however, someone can set up their own website with its own domain name for a hosting fee as low as a few dollars per month. At no additional charge, they can download and install free open source software to add interactive features comparable in sophistication to those available on internet versions of major newspapers.

A number of highly successful websites have begun in just this fashion.

Craigslist, which now has local versions in every major city in the United States and many mid-sized cities, began as a personal online mailing list maintained

by Craig Newmark. Wikipedia, which is currently one of the ten most highlyvisited websites in existence, only had a single employee during the first two years of operation (and laid him off for lack of funds shortly before its traffic began to hit the stratosphere).

For large, heavily-trafficked websites, obviously there are expenses involved in maintaining servers, software upgrades, content creation and so forth.

However, the price of entry into internet publishing is dramatically lower than the

price of entry into traditional media such as newspapers and television.

Herman and Chomsky consider advertising "the second filter," arguing that "The advertisers' choices influence media prosperity and survival. The ad-based media receive an advertising subsidy that gives them a price-marketing-quality edge, which allows them to encroach on and further weaken their ad-free (or disadvantaged) rivals."

On the internet, by contrast, advertising-heavy websites may attract more revenue than ad-free sites, but the ads themselves are perceived as such a nuisance by readers that they hardly provide a quality advantage. Moreover, the advertising model used by many sites, including bloggers in particular, relies heavily on Google ads, in which the selection of advertisements for inclusion on a page is based on search engine-driven keyword matches in which advertisers seek to place their ads on sites relevant to their products. In practice virtually any website will contain content that matches some advertiser's keywords, so this system does not impose much pressure on sites to tailor their content to advertisers' wishes (although it probably does create an incentive for the creation of online porn).

Moreover, many of the top websites in existence have challenged the influence of advertising in other ways. Wikipedia's users have generally opposed placing even Google ads on their site, even though doing so would generate tens of millions of dollars annually. Instead, they have raised funds through appeals for donations from users and, only recently, though corporate and foundation grants. The Craigslist website actually runs free advertisements and has been a source of consternation for traditional newspapers, which are seeing their own revenues from classified ads as marketing money shifts to online venues.

The internet has given rise to a phenomenon called "citizen journalism" which assumes, from the outset, that any amateur can be a journalist — a trend that has drawn both complaints and interest from conventional journalists.

In South Korea, OhmyNews became popular and commercially successful with the motto, "Every citizen is a reporter." It has a staff of some 40-plus traditional reporters and editors who write about 20 percent of its content, with the rest coming from other freelance contributors who are mostly ordinary citizens. Similar examples of this trend include websites like Wikinews, ePluribus-

Media, NewAssignment.net and CMD's own wiki, SourceWatch.

Much of traditional journalists' reliance on official sources is based on their regular "beats." It happens at all levels of journalism. I used to work as a newspaper reporter for a small daily paper (circulation: 7,000) in the town of Portage, Wisconsin. Simply by virtue of the fact that I covered city council and county board meetings, I quickly became acquainted with the mayor, the local sheriff, local businesspeople, etc. When those are the people you bump into regularly, they become your sources. That dynamic is somewhat different, however, with citizen journalists. Just as anyone can become a journalist, anyone can become a source.

The first photograph of flagdraped coffins returning from Iraq was not taken by a traditional journalist but

by Tami Silicio, a cargo worker in Kuwait who worked loading the coffins into airplanes for shipment home. She took the picture with a digital camera, emailed it to a friend back home, who took it to the Seattle Times. (After it was published, Tami was fired from her job.) The damning photos of human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib were also not taken by journalists but by the abusers themselves, who documented their own crimes. And it was another soldier, Sergeant Joseph Darby, who discovered the photos, copied them onto a CD, and exposed the scandal. In both of these instances, the ease with which digital media can be reproduced and transmitted helped bypass the filter of official sources.

Herman and Chomsky define "flak" as "negative responses to a media statement or program. it may take the form of letters, telegraphs, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits, speeches and bills before Congress, and other modes of complaint, threat, and punitive action."

(Note that "flak" is different from "flack," a derogatory term for publicists.)

Many of the new internet media are sources of flak, and people across the spectrum of American politics have learned to use flak for their own purposes. On the internet itself, however, flak is not much of a deterrent to free discourse.

Lawsuits are difficult to mount and even more difficult to win, especially given the ease with which people can blog or email anonymously. If anything, the "negative responses" that Herman and Chomsky describe help fuel the popularity of popular websites like the Daily Kos or Drudge Report, which attract much of their audience precisely by stirring passionate and even ugly debate.

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With the end of the cold war, anti-communism has faded somewhat as a national ideology. These days much of this sort of rhetoric is couched in the language of "anti-terrorism" or "anti-Islam" — or, more generally, anti-anti-Americanism.

The use of anti-communism as a filtering ideology should probably be seen, therefore, as simply one example of a broader filter, namely, "nationalism as an ideological control mechanism."

Enthusiasts of new media are fond of declaring that the internet "changes everything." Today, we are told, "markets are conversations." Corporations and other elites must therefore listen to their stakeholders as never before. Secrecy and manipulation from above can supposedly no longer survive the harsh glare of public scrutiny in this new media environment.

The importance of these developments should not be underestimated, but they should not be exaggerated either.

The trends I described above may seem to contradict some of the analysis presented in Manufacturing Consent, but thus far things haven't changed all that much. Far from it. Any serious contemplation of the process by which the United States went to war in Iraq tells us that propaganda is still a powerful force in shaping public opinion. As the growing public unrest with the war demonstrates, propaganda is not all-powerful, but it has been powerful enough to create war hysteria against a country that posed no threat to the American people and to keep Americans mired in that war for four years and counting.

One reason that things have not changed as much as the techno-utopians imagine is that the traditional broadcast media remain the dominant media today. Television is still the main medium through which Americans get their information about the world. Much of the ferment that I have been describing on the blogosphere actually consists of people discussing what they have seen on TV, read in newspapers or heard on the radio.

New media such as the internet will undoubtedly continue to grow in importance as time progresses, but their actual impact to date is still limited.

Another, equally important factor, is that although the specific filtering mechanisms that Herman and Chomsky describe in Manufacturing Consent may not apply in the same ways to the internet, new techniques of molding and directing public opinion are emerging along with the new media.

The Edelman public relations firm, for example, has created what they call a "me2revolution" unit that focuses

specifically on developing PR techniques for new internet media. Edelman recently partnered with Technorati, a leading search engine devoted specifically to bloggers. Edelman is funding an "accelerated development effort" to expand Technorati's search capabilities into languages including Chinese, Korean, German, Italian and French. In exchange, they hope to gain the ability to better monitor what bloggers are saying about their clients.

And they're not just listening. Edelman is also resposible for the coinage of a new term: "flog" for "fake blog." On behalf of Wal-Mart Stores, their employees have posed as "grassroots" bloggers on two Wal-Mart-sponsored websites, "Working Families for Wal-Mart" and "PaidCritics. com," which — rather ironically — slams the "paid critics [who are] smearing Wal-Mart." Here we see a long-standing propaganda tactic — the creation of front groups — being retooled for the internet.

With regard to Iraq, we've also seen the military experimenting with various internet-based PR strategies including posting its own videos on Google Video and YouTube and hired the PR firm of Manning, Selvage & Lee to help distribute pro-war content feeds to "milbloggers."

More recently, they have tried blocking internet access for active-duty soldiers.

While these may appear to be contradictory strategies, both seek to control the messages relayed online.

As new technology enters the mainstream, therefore, we can expect changes in the techniques used to influence public opinion, but institutions with wealth and power will continue to do so.

Power still concedes nothing without a struggle.

Published by Factotum 9 Lombard Street Belfast BT1 2RW [e] info@factotum.org.uk www.factotum.org.uk Editors & Design Stephen Hackett Richard West Reviews Editor Fionola Merideth Web editor Stephen Hull Distribution Manager Jason Mills Advertising Stephen Hackett To advertise in the Vacuum or receive information about our advertising rates call 028 90330893 or email info@ factotum.org.uk Print run: 15,000 Distribution: Northern Ireland and Dublin The Vacuum welcomes and encourages correspondence.

Write to the above address or email letters@factotum.org.uk All copyright remains with the authors.

Printer: Bangor Spectator

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Hoaxing for Fun, Fame and Financial Gain By Alan Abel My hoaxing career began four decades ago when I launched a fake campaign to clothe all naked animals for the sake of decency because “a nude horse is a rude horse.”

It spread worldwide after Walter Cronkite discussed the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals on the nationally televised CBS Evening News. I’ve heard he remains angry to this day for being fooled. He’s not still mad at Hitler, Mussolini or Hussein. Just me!

Over the years I’ve launched a hundred hoaxes and very few failed to attract media attention. If you have an outrageous story and a competent cast to perform on the world stage, it will be published as fact. Especially on a slow news day between the ax-murders and serial killers who dominate the front pages.

It’s not easy to concoct a believable concept that amuses and has sociological significance. Jonathan Swift was an inspiration to me with his essay, “A Modest Proposal,” that urged starving people to eat their babies. When breastfeeding in public was being debated, I formed an organization to ban all breastfeeding because “it is an incestuous relationship between mother and baby that manifests an oral addiction from the naughty nipple, leading to smoking, drinking and even homosexuality.”

The media fell for this story and I did two hundred interviews, all by telephone on radio talk shows, because I’m too readily recognized. Sadly, I had to turn down Oprah, Dr. Phil and Larry King.

One time I did expose myself…just down to my jockey shorts…when HBO asked for men willing to talk about their genitalia. I claimed to be the smallest in the Guinness Book of Records (one inch erect) and they featured me on the special one-hour program, Private Dicks, Men Exposed. Although I used an assumed name, the network was flooded with calls explaining who I really was. It became one of HBO’s most repeated shows.

During the seventies I had a long running caper called Omar’s School for Beggars.

Allegedly, I taught people how to earn hundreds a week with various ploys.

For example, putting ketchup on your sleeve and claiming you were stabbed and needed money for a taxi to the hospital. The media had a field day with this one. I wore a black hood to mask my identity for television appearances.

After the Wall Street Journal published a scathing editorial denouncing Omar’s immoral school, New York Magazine ran an expose. They had a reporter infiltrate one of my fake classes (I had friends posing as student beggars). But he caught on and I confessed.

The late Maxwell Sackheim, founder of

the Book-of-the-Month Club, financed the larger hoaxes. He was retired in Florida, worth millions and vicariously enjoyed my giving people a kick in the intellect. Nor did his checks ever bounce.

If a major story in the news offended Max, he would ask me to create a hoax to punish the culprit. When Idi Amin ravaged Uganda and fled to safety in Cape Town, Africa, Sackheim was furious. The U.S. State Department allowed his private plane, under diplomatic immunity, free access in America for luxury items.

I suggested we embarrass the U.S. State Department by pretending they allowed Amin to sneak into New York City, marry a WASP and become an American citizen.

Max gave me the green light.

Alan Abel dressed as Omar, a man who taught people how to panhandle professionally (1975).

Alan Abel holding a copy of the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals official magazine (1964).

There is always a need for more organs and not enough people are willing to donate theirs after they die. Actually, it’s against the law to sell an organ. So we changed the ad to rent it for 99 years, like real estate.

I found a tall African-American man on the subway who weighed 250 pounds and he agreed to play Amin. We rented the Presidential Suite at the ritzy Plaza Hotel and invited the media to attend the wedding. There were 150 reporters who showed up (keep in mind this was 1978, before the Internet, so it took several days until the real despot could be located).

The State Department was embarrassed enough to deny Amin’s private plane any further landing rights in Miami. And they breathed a sigh of relief after learning it was all a joke.

Another hoax I enjoyed launching was having one of my merry pranksters advertise his kidney for sale. Paul claimed to be broke and out of work, which he was.

There is always a need for more organs and not enough people are willing to donate theirs after they die. Actually, it’s against the law to sell an organ. So we changed the ad to rent it for 99 years, like real estate. This was another media blockbuster with several hundred members of the press, including camera crews, from around the world. The news conference had to be held in New York City’s Grand Central Station to handle the overflow crowd. Paul received over forty job offers and accepted one in communications.

There was also a huge splurge of organ

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COMING SOON AT THE

Stereolab An outraged taxpayer challenges Yetta Bronstein's presidential campaign manager (1968)

......................................................Considered as one of the first post-rock outfits, their sound encompasses krautrock, Brazilian tropicalia, 50s lounge, French pop, free jazz and art rock in a manner that is utterly fresh and uniquely their own.

Sunday 14 December h

donations as a result of this worthy caper.

Several years ago Dr. Joe Vitale called me from Austin, TX. He is a well-known inspirational guru who lectures extensively and writes motivational books. His latest, “There’s a Customer Born Every Minute,” was about to be published and he wanted a grand hoax in the spirit of P.T. Barnum.

I was looking at daughter Jennifer’s dog Cecil and I wondered what he was thinking. That gave me the idea to hold a concert only for dogs in Austin. The music would be played on such a high frequency, humans couldn’t hear it. But they would have to bring their pets to the park and Joe’s book could be sold at strategic stands. That was the plan and it worked like a charm.

The rock band pantomimed playing on the bandstand. At the end of each tune, hidden confederates blew high frequency whistles to excite the animals so they would jump around and bark in appreciation. For further believability there was electronic equipment blinking on stage that supposedly elevated the music beyond human ears.

This publicity stunt was well covered by the media and “There’s a Customer Born Every Minute” eventually became a number one best seller on amazon.com for three days.

My daughter, Jennifer, and her partner Jeff Hockett wrote, directed and edited a documentary on all my past exploits called “Abel Raises Cain” that won the Grand Jury Prize at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2005. The DVD is now available on www.abelraisescain.com.

Finally, if you’re interested in developing a hoax, I might be interested in helping.

Nothing criminal or physical. Just lots of

fun. And bring money. It’s impossible to fool the media nowadays without funds to pay for props, performers and someone who has had plenty of experience. That’s me.

My website is: www.alanabel.com

The Skatalites

................................................................................"The Skatalites were essential in the transformation of Ska with its obvious connection to the United States and its high speed tempos into Reggae."

Tuesday 16 December h

John Shuttleworth

..........................................................................................................Join 'Sheffield's finest comedy synthesizer-player and twaddle-talker' in a brand new show, the first since the highly successful 'With My Condiments' tour of 2007. The minor Tour' promises to be a celebration of all things strange and mythological, which may even include Father Christmas himself!

Wednesday 17 December 8.30PM h

Pigeon and Plums

.....................................................................................................The Music Hall Cabaret Pigeon and Plum's always keeps patrons glued to their seats with acts ranging from Front of House meet and greet Stilt Walkers, Traditional Carnival Barkers and Popcorn Sellers to comedians, acrobats, escapologists, trapeze artists and magicians to name but a few.

Thursday 18 December ................................................... visit website below to buy tickets

www.blackboxbelfast.com

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by aeron davis by jason mills

Political Spin Spins Back In popular accounts of politics, politicians are seen as practitioners rather than victims of spin. Government always employs the largest single concentration of public relations staff. Political parties increasingly employ professionals, from press officers to film directors, to manage their media images. Most politicians now undergo media training and image consultancy in readiness for their ‘Paxman moment’. Journalists, who often struggle with media-savvy politicians and their aides, cannot help but reveal their frustrations in insider accounts. Behind every Blair and Bush there seems to lurk a legion of all-powerful Alistair Campbells and Karl Roves. So it is difficult to entertain the idea of politicians themselves being spun.

However, despite their media knowledge and political experience, politicians are themselves subjected to spin on a daily basis. This became clear during my recent interviews with some 60 politicians about the policy process. Just as they attempt to influence public debate so they are also targeted by many wider interests. In today’s ‘public relations democracy’ every small to medium sized company, interest group and institution has a public relations budget and several staff. Other politicians, professional lobbyists, numerous interest groups and journalists themselves, all attempt to influence MPs. They all want to impact on the political agenda and the policy process.

And politicians cannot help but be susceptible for several reasons. Like anyone, MPs, and the reporters they read, can easily fall prey to misrepresentation and public relations tricks. Third party endorsement, fake institutions, ‘astro-turf’ (fake grass roots) campaigns, selective statistical data, slanted survey questionnaire results, corporate and interest group proclamations of doom, are common. Political party spin itself can be highly effective against politicians themselves. When Tony Blair changed Labour’s Clause IV, many in the audience were unaware at the time of what exactly was being proposed. But they were still encouraged to give a warm response for the reporters. At the Conservative Party conference in 2005, when leadership candidates were making speeches, many David Cameron supporters were said to have been deliberately seated below the press box. They sat in bored silence

when David Davis spoke and cheered wildly when David Cameron addressed the audience. Journalists and watching party members were encouraged to react accordingly.

Turning to news, politicians are prone to spinning by coverage in mass media itself. MPs of course are sensitive to their and their party’s public image.

The large majority of those I interviewed were self-confessed ‘media junkies’. On average they consumed news from five different sources, including three newspapers, each day. Even when MPs can personally question story information the fear is that many of their constituents cannot. Populist issues, drawing large media attention, encourage MP nerves to fray and sometimes knee-jerk reactions from ministers. The Dangerous Dogs Act, the Gambling Act, the Hunting Act and changes in fuel taxation, have all been pushed through or delayed in recent years as a result of high-profile media campaigns. Likewise, concerted newsmedia led campaigns have been responsible for the bringing down of several government ministers on rather spurious grounds. In all of these cases it was not the case that most politicians supported the end result. They simply felt unable to repel what they were perceived to be the weight of public opinion.

perhaps the most common reason for politicians’ susceptibility to spin comes from their over-reliance on the information others offer them But, perhaps the most common reason for politicians’ susceptibility to spin comes from their over-reliance on the information others offer them. Behind the public façade of calm control MPs struggle to keep up. Moving constantly between constituency and parliament they are beset with daily issues they know little or nothing about. Keeping open the local hospital and the failing school compete with national energy policy and the international banking crisis. Every working day they have to come to conclusions

about complex issues and then take action. Most MPs I spoke to admitted they could never keep up with more than half a dozen specialist policy areas and could only know the details of 15 to 20 percent of the legislation they voted on.

Naturally they turn to a variety of sources for guidance. This may be the policy line spun to them by their party central office. It may be one of the many professional-looking briefing documents sent to them by corporations and interest groups. Several such documents appear in an MP’s postbag and/or email box daily. No matter how weary they were of incoming material it was often weighed up and compared with other sources.

Even if the wider scientific consensus agrees that global warming is occurring there are enough counter briefings to suggest the science ‘is conflicted’. It was the same with the smoking, CFCs and the ozone layer, and lead in petrol.

This reliance on ‘information subsidies’ and outside experts for guidance can have rather more profound effects. Like many logical-thinking professionals, when MPs have too much information they seek out established institutions and recognised authorities within the field. The Foreign Office for news on international affairs and crises.

The farming community for their views on food supply and regulation. The City for guidance on how financial markets work most efficiently. But such bodies and groups have particular professional interests to uphold as much as they do the public good. Unfortunately they often find themselves holding the ‘information monopoly’ on a topic. And MPs do not have the resources to question this official consensus.

Thus many MPs believed there were weapons of mass destruction when they accepted the ‘pre-emptive strike’ justification for war in Iraq. Because the farming community had become such a dominant player in its own regulation so a wave of food production crises developed. Salmonella in eggs, BSE in cows, and foot and mouth disease eventually led to the dissolution of MAFF, the government department in charge. We are currently witnessing something similar in the financial system. For years, leading financiers in New York and London persuaded politicians and treasury officials that they knew best about financial markets. All solutions to the seizing up

Thus, those who live by spin are no more able to resist its charms than the rest of us. And the rest of us, in turn, fall victim to its longer-term consequences. of the banking community are offered once again by the same sources. Governments now do not know where to turn for a radical plan B. Thus, those who live by spin are no more able to resist its charms than the rest of us. And the rest of us, in turn, fall victim to its longer-term consequences.

the vacuum

PRAVDA

By Stuart Watson

Ulster Bank “Business Bite” Corporate Magazine scum (IMMORAL PERSON) noun [C or U] plural scum INFORMAL a very bad or immoral person or group of people. (from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary) Business bites alright. Like a rabid dog in the final stages of hydrophobia business could be said to be tearing raw, bleeding pounds of flesh from our tender hides at the moment with only the prospect of further foaming attacks on the horizon.

So it is that I come to “Business Bite”, the Ulster Bank corporate magazine. Judging by the back cover competition to win tickets to see “pint-sized princess of pop” Kylie on June 27 this is a somewhat out of date edition, although perhaps they saw the global economic meltdown coming and decided to cease further publication.

Sadly and inevitably though,

the contents of this publication give no indication that the business practices of various financial institutions around the globe (though none of our wee banks, surely) were about to reduce us all to a state of gibbering penury. Surely they would have known, even our wee banks! you cry. Apparently not: divining through the guts of the articles gives no further illumination and indeed the opening pages contain an editorial on business growth and a hilarious guide presenting 5 ways to accelerate it. In light of current affairs number 5 deserves to be quoted in full: “Take a punt: Take a calculated gamble, an experiment, limiting cost, and risk and see what happens.

Punts often work, and even when they don’t, there is usually much to learn and other opportunities will be discovered in the process.”

So says Dr Adrian Gundy of the Centre for Competitiveness; I hope he gets a rosy glow from the fire he and his other newly homeless consultant brethren huddle

round, as they ruminate on what they’ve learnt from such high level calculated gambling. And for any small businesses out in the wastelands lucky enough to still be doing business rejoice! For you can still avail of such risk limiting advice at a seminar in the Hilton Hotel. Ulster Bank doesn’t reveal the cost of this seminar though if they’ve been following Adrian’s advice themselves they could soon be out of business anyway.

The rest of the publication is full of the usual corporate fluff and puff pieces common to this sort of depressing tome, though it does all have a prosperous tone exemplifying the poignant ignorance of subsequent events (poor lambs): an article on wines substantially more expensive than the cheap fortifieds we’re drinking now; a feature on arts expansion in Belfast with a lovely photograph of Meryl Streep wondering why she’s in this backwater and what she’s talking about; a story concerning a thriving local acoustic guitar business (luckily for them they’ll be in high demand when the money runs out and the electricity generators are shut down); an article on Fivemiletown cheese (featuring a nice photograph of a man standing in front of a cow and holding cheese – the cow looks distinctly unimpressed at this use of its congealed fluids and the man sports a frozen rictus suggesting that he’s all too aware he’s soon to be in for a bit of bovine revenge buggery) and an article on a terrifying leather handbag from Dragons Den (maybe an “ethnic” food condiment is one way out of the economic abyss: “Dubstep Dubstep Sauce” perhaps). The final pages even contain a not-so-hilarious-now (or even then after reading it) Dilbert cartoon about layoffs! Layoffs! Imagine that.

The magazine does function as a capsule glimpse at attitudes that already seem hopelessly shortsighted and, while perhaps not quite immoral, at least imprudent. It’s easy to find a mordant humour in reading page after page of stories celebrating “taking a punt” and rampant expansionism with hardly a cautionary note struck (I particularly enjoyed the article on the redevelopment of the Titanic Quarter, headline: “Titanic on course for major impact with Belfast”, well we’re all sinking now). It gets harder though as you think of the subsequent months and how people are paying now, some more than others (8,000 construction industry jobs lost or under threat in Northern Ireland according to the Construction Employers’ Federation); the notion of perhaps immoral, unregulated business practice does rear up again.

Still, at least when the bailouts fail (billions for the NHS next then Gordon? No, didn’t think so) and we’re reduced to scrabbling for survival by way of exchanging our precious material goods in a medieval barter system (“what do you MEAN you won’t exchange a gallon of heating oil for an original vinyl copy of Great White Death by Whitehouse! ‘I’m Comin’ Up Your Ass’ is on it!”) we can follow the helpfully provided list of “7 ways to reduce stress and restore harmony”, full of such useful advice as “eat at least one meal a day” (bit optimistic now), “share the load” (as taxpayers we’re already sharing the load, thanks) and best of all “let things go” (like houses, jobs, education, that sort of thing). All together now – aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

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the vacuum

WHAT'S HE BUILDING IN THERE? TELEPHONE HOUSE, BELFAST

By Jared Longlands

Telephone House is one of those buildings that you could walk past a hundred times without really looking at. I walked past it every day on my way to work before finally noticing it (possibly because I was asked to write this article).

It’s an impressive edifice, constructed of great silver grey bricks between 1932 and 1934 and had originally housed the exchanges for all of Belfast before they were shipped out to the local areas with the rise of privately owned telephones.

It’s a strangely blank building too, as unyielding of surface information as a game of poker between Presidential bodyguards.

But what goes on inside is what I was tasked to find out.

(Actually, I was initially given a choice between it and a strange dome shaped building up near Airport Road West. Upon casual perusal I found that the latter structure was property of the Airport itself and likely, in our paranoid post-9/11 times, to be as easy to enter as a bears asshole.)

So, Telephone House – a piece of cake.

For a start I knew a guy on the inside, a Deep Throat if you will, except my Deep Throat is a very nice guy who plays excellent blues guitar (something that would have spiced up All the Presidents Men no end).

So, would he be able to get me in?

“No.” Oh, go on.

“Sorry, we’ve had a security upgrade recently. You could try asking our liaison officer.”

He’s able to provide a telephone number and e-mail address so I contact them post haste, assuring them that I wouldn’t take the piss or besmirch the good name of British Telecom. A tense weeklong wait ensued before I received their reply…

Unfortunately, I have to decline our request for information about Telephone House. I have been advised by our Security team that the current BT security policy dictates that we are unable to provide any information relating to any of our operational sites .

What’s going on here? Current security dictates that they can’t tell me about the history of the place? So to the first stop for any lazy journalist I go: Google. I trawl the internet for hours on end, trying to find any previous article that might shine a light on Telephone House’s business. I find all the usual

guff: Built then, from this, by him, for that. While there I read up on telephone exchanges and find my imagination is sadly outdated. In the place of those immaculately dressed women of yesteryear, languidly smoking between connecting calls, there now sit row upon row of air conditioned grey steel cabinets full of infernally dull digital switches.

Progress? Well, on my travels I saw a photograph of a 1924 PBX switchboard. Sure it’d be prohibitively slow in this day and age but the thing is a work of art, looking like a cross between an upright piano and a synthesizer or perhaps some sort of mad Steampunk fax machine. One of those in the front hall would beat the hell out of whatever faux-antiquated rotary dial guff M&S are flogging these days.

But then, to puncture my maudlin reverie, I also read that the Victorians, when not throwing them up chimneys or down mines, used to employ children for pittance to work in telephone exchanges. Unfortunately they were too busy wrestling with each

other and swearing at the customers to be in any way productive, but we’ll chalk that one up to the virtues of progress anyway.

Eventually I find a seemingly innocuous article about Telephone House’s Data Centre in a magazine called Business Eye that’s full of tantalising hints. I discover that the Data Centre has been passed by Government to handle data officially classified as ‘confidential’, dealing with customers as far away as the US with security so stringent that it includes iris scanning! I also find out that it used to house Northern Ireland’s Nuclear Attack Command Centre, that it is apparently bomb proof and came through a direct hit during the troubles.

This was the cool stuff I wanted someone to tell me about (and I can’t help but feel aggrieved that they let poxy Business Eye in on the dirt without giving the vastly superior Vacuum an inside look)…

In a fit of possibly delusional behaviour I decided to test their security in the only way I knew how: by standing

outside and ostentatiously taking pictures with a flash camera. In the failing light the building seemed more like some Orwellian ministry than I’d ever before considered and I was torn halfway between hope and fear that I was going to be dragged to some atmospherically antiseptic room deep in its bowels and strapped to a chair with a box full of rats over my head.

But it was worse than that: no one seemed to care. All I got for my provocations were odd looks from confused employees.

Then, to my surprise, someone else squirmed out of the woodwork.

Deep Throat 2: Deep Throater!

I ask about the Data Centre and their security systems.

“Didn’t know about that!”

What about the Nuclear Attack Command Centre?

“News to me!”

What about the explosion?

“Oh I was working there when that happened. A Guinness truck pulled up outside and we all thought ‘That’s a bit strange’, then it blew up. Blew all the windows out and the lanterns off the ceiling.”

Wow. “Yeah, the place was also a target for the Germans during the Second World War but they missed. They blew up the waterworks and half of North Belfast but kept missing their targets: Telephone House and the dockyards!”

But what exactly is going on in there today?

“Well there’s records, planning… Sales are moving in at the moment too. Controls as well. They deal with faults on the network, 151 and all that.”

So what you’re saying is that, at the moment, the work going on inside is…?

“Really it’s just kind of dull menial work,” he says, pausing for a moment.

I can’t help but hope this pause suggests that on the other end of the phone he’s engaged in wrestling with his conscience, trying to decide whether or not to let me in on the big stuff – the Men in Black’s underground offices, the giant turbines of indeterminate use down the hall… My fingers cramp with crossing.

“Yeah,” he says finally, “Dull menial work, that’s it.”

the vacuum

TOUCHED BY GENIUS

By Peter McCloskey I’ve never met a genius, as far as I can tell anyway, though I‘d like to. I met Neil Webb, (remember him - he played for England) outside Goodison Park when I was nine. Now there’s certainly room for argument (a pretty solid one at that I’d say) that Neil Webb is in fact, not a genius but as far as I was concerned, when I met Neil Webb, I was in the presence of unmitigated divinity. He signed an autograph for me. I remember turning to my dad who said, ‘keep hold of that little book son, everyone in school will be jealous, you wait and see.’ There were other names in that little book too. We had waited on my insistence after the game against metal barriers at the player’s entrance to the ground. The Evertonians came first, mostly a lot of people I didn’t recognise, but this was good as I got the chance to get some much needed practice in. I had crawled down low and pushed myself through the crowd, right to the front where I was able to wedge myself between the barrier and somebody’s legs and managed to hoist myself up so that my head peaked out over the top of the metal barrier. I even succeeded in getting a hand free. When the players started to

file out I took my cue from the Everton fans around me and shouted the players names and waved my autograph book at them. ‘Hey Gary! Gary Ablett… over here!… Oi, Neville… yeah you… the fat one with the ’tach. Sign this will ya?!….

Look dad, look… is that? It couldn‘t be!

It is! It’s Peter Beagire! Peter….PETER!!!

Sign my book!’ I was getting well good at this autograph hunting lark, but Everton players were one thing, no one in school would be adequately envious enough to browse through a book full of the scrawled signatures of mostly Evertonian reserve team players and backroom staff.

I had bigger fish to fry. Neil Webb was close, the air felt thicker and the temperature had dropped a few degrees - sure fire signs. And indeed soon the Manchester United players began to emerge… the same players who lined the walls of my bedroom. Superstars like Mike Phelan, Les Sealey and Clayton Blackmore. I got a few of them, but Neil Webb was nowhere to be seen. I was dejected and had just about given up, assuming he must have left early, probably in a helicopter or a hovercraft, or some other form of transport reserved for deity’s of his stature. But

then, the door opened and there he was, dressed in a neat, dark suit - perfect hair.

I remember clearly a bright light shining and smoke pluming out from behind him, like when contestants take to the stage on ‘Stars in Their Eyes’, though this has since been disconfirmed by those present. I proceeded briefly to lose my young mind and began shouting (‘screaming’ I was later told by my embarrassed father) at the top of my voice, ‘NEILLLLL! NEILLLL! NEEIIIIL! AAAGGAHHHH! OVVERRR HEERRREE! PLEEASEEEE! WAGGHHHHH!’ He signed my book and shook my hand, he must have thought there was something wrong with me, like one of those wee kids on ‘Jim’ll Fix It’ who haven‘t got long to live and whose dying wish is meet their hero. ‘There you go son.’ he said passing the book back to me glancing a sympathetic wink in the direction of my mortified father. ‘Dad, Dad, he called me ‘son’. Neil Webb called me ‘son’. I wish Neil Webb was my dad, Dad.’ ‘Get in the car you bloody lunatic.’ he replied.

I was back to school on Monday morning.

I pictured myself on the shoulders of my class mates, people cheering, scrambling

over desks and filling the corridors, eager to get close, maybe even touch the page Neil Webb had soiled with his inscription.

‘That’s it.’ I said’, turning over the front cover with the type of reverence reserved for the thumbing of the pages of The Book of Kells, ‘that’s Neil Webb.’

‘That doesn’t say Neil Webb.’ piped up some covetous bastard eager to burst my bubble.

‘Yes it is, look, it clearly is.’

‘No,’ came another voice, ‘that looks like Fred something.’

‘That says Neil! And that bit says Webb!’

‘It looks like West?

‘It says Webb!’

‘Who’s Fred West?’

‘Ask him, he’s got his autograph.’

‘It’s Neil Webb!!!’

‘It’s not, you’re a liar.

‘I’m not, I met Neil Webb.’

‘You did not. I’ll ask teacher.’

‘How will she know?’

‘She knows everything.’

‘No she doesn’t!’

‘Miss Murphy, Miss Murphy. Who’s Fred West? Peter has his autograph!’

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the vacuum

a bull in a china shop The Story of Jim Moran, father of the public relations prank. By Jason Mills.

satirical sideswipe at the numerous other Hollywood ceremonies. Each Hollywood studio boss received a dried pig’s anus placed on a velvet cushion in a jeweled box with a certificate declaring them Asshole of the Year. He gradually faded out of the limelight in the seventies and lived out his retirement in relative seclusion. When he died in 1999 the New York Times ran an obituary which proclaimed that his life could be best described by two symbols, the exclamation mark and dollar sign.

Reference: ‘The Fame Formula’ by Mark Borkowski (MacMillan 2008)

‘It’s a sad day for American capitalism when a man can’t fly a midget on a kite over Central Park’.

Such were the words of maverick publicist and keen kite-flyer Jim Moran when his intended stunt to publicise a chocolate bar was foiled at the last minute by the NewYork police. At the point of this intervention several banner-carrying midgets were attached to large kites by a harness and were ready to be launched into the air to act as advertising blimps.

Moran’s career, spanning five decades, was filled with such outlandish incidents. His first proper commission was for a New York dairy in the mid-1930’s who contacted him to advertise them after hearing one of his radio features. He took the inspiration for his endeavour from a well-known line by author of nonsense rhymes Gelett Burgess, ‘I never saw a purple cow / I never hope to see one’.

Moran promptly acquired a cow from his dairy client, dyed it purple (with silver hooves), and turned up outside Burgess’ hotel with an entourage of journalists.

Burgess was summoned from his room and confronted with the cow, to which he reputedly exclaimed ‘My God!’. At this point the assembled press began photographing with and questioning him about the cow, leading to a successful flurry of publicity for the dairy.

Another bovine-related stunt also

demonstrated his penchant for exploring the extremes of proverbs and clichéd sayings. In order to test what damage ‘a bull in a china shop’ would really do, he organised for his sponsor, band leader Fred Waring, to lead a 1000-pound bull (possibly acquired from the aforementioned dairy) through an upmarket shop selling fine chinaware on Fifth Avenue. In the newspapers the following day much was made of the fact that the bull had broken nothing whereas Waring himself had caused $40 worth of damage after bumping into a shelf. The intention of garnering publicity for Waring’s radio show was achieved, and no-doubt the china shop went along with the idea for similar reasons.

Other proverbs around which Moran based his activities included an 82-hour search for a needle hidden in two tonnes of hay in order to sell real-estate (the idea being that searching for a house with a particular estate agent wouldn’t be like ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’).

Another time, he decided that if ‘selling a refrigerator to an Eskimo’ was the pinnacle of salesmanship then he would achieve it. Securing sponsorship from American Ice Manufacturers and United Airlines he set off to Alaska for the task. The fridge was eventually bequeathed with much ceremony upon a willing Eskimo in exchange for $100, two fox furs and a piece of ivory. This approach of stretching

common adages to the point of surrealism even brought some employment from the Republican Party. When the Democrats declared during the 1944 election that voters ‘couldn’t change horses midstream’, their political opponents hired Moran hopped from one horse to another in the middle of the Truckee River.

Although Jim Moran generally worked outside the conventions of the studio system, he still took jobs when offered them. In 1946 for the film The Egg And I, he devised a plan to hatch an ostrich egg wearing an elaborate feathered costume complete with ‘hatching pants’. For 19 days, 4 hours and 32 minutes he incubated the egg in a specially constructed chair on wheels, which even allowed him to sleep whilst still resting gently on it. When the egg finally hatched Moran passed around cigars and birth announcements. Another animal stunt was concocted for the film The Matchmaker in 1956, nearly ending in disaster. An orangutan in a chauffeur’s cap appeared to be driving around New York in a taxi with the slogan ‘I’m on my way to see The Matchmaker’ emblazoned on the side. The cab, of course, was rigged so that Moran could control it whilst concealed in the back seat, although it ended up involved in a collision with another vehicle.

Moran’s anarchic attitude is perhaps best summed up in his award presentations, which he set up as a

the vacuum

War PR

I don’t believe there’s such a thing as ‘war photography’. War isn’t an object that can be described, communicated, represented or understood via photographs of some of the things that happen in it. War isn’t a thing, it’s a circumstance, like love or hate, or ‘living in Croydon’. You might be able to photograph moments in a life that show some of the outward, superficial manifestations of these things, but you’ll never be able to tell me, in a photograph, what any of them actually means. Not really.

There are, however, distinct genres that arise from war: there’s ‘village-burning photography’, and ‘torture photography’, and ‘trench photography’, and ‘deserted battlefield photography’, and so on. And of course there’s run of the mill ‘creative’ photography that simply happens to be executed in the middle of war (although if everyone looks more or less OK and nobody’s dead or wounded or holding a gun, that’s not much good). Of course, ‘creative’ decisions, about essentially formal or aesthetic concerns, inform all the war genres: you decide it might look better if you move the corpse there and distribute some spent cartridges near that disembodied foot, or you get the lighting just right on that anguished woman’s face as she screams her dead husband’s name repeatedly and clutches at her hair, in that way that tells you that ‘war is really really bloody nasty’. War’s a great place to do creative photography because lots of exciting things happen in it, like people getting shot and falling over, or kids getting bombs dropped on them, or artillery shells falling in fantastic patterns that form wonderful dynamic compositions. All these things are perfect subjects for photography, because the more they confirm the disgusting nature of the things that happen in war, the more they offer scope for creative expression and validate the credentials of the photographer: ‘I’m really glad he took that beautifully arranged picture of the bloke’s head being hacked off by drug-addled bandits because it confirms my suspicion that I don’t like that sort of thing, and that makes me think he must be a pretty cool kind of guy, and it’s actually weirdly sort of pretty, in a way that I find I can’t articulate. Neat.’

War photography can be very good PR, but since the invention of the medium, the potential has always existed for it to be pretty bad PR too, by demonstrating that the war isn’t quite going according to plan. In a war where a few thousand professional soldiers fight an unfamiliar enemy very far away, bad PR just means people thinking that the war isn’t a great idea. In a war where all the men between 18 and 40 are conscripted and sent to fight, bad PR can be utterly demoralising: hence the tight censorship

By Daniel Jewesbury

Above: Dead Confederate sharpshooter in the Devil's Den, Gettysburg, Pa., Alexander Gardner, 1863.

Below: Dead Troops Talk (A vision after an ambush of a Red Army patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986), Jeff Wall, 1992.

that was generally accepted during the Second World War, and which the Americans found themselves unable to impose in Vietnam, to their cost. Photographs of foreign prisoners being pissed on or sexually humiliated make the perpetrators, and their comrades, look extremely bad and that lowers morale; but some of these photographs sometimes turn out to be fake, and that’s good PR. The Boston Globe printed photographs that it claimed showed American troops raping Iraqi women. It turned out the photographs were staged images from a pornographic website themed around sexual abuse

of Iraqi women. This is disturbing: the staged pornography communicates a number of complex, violent messages not just about women but about the Iraqi people too; in that way it could be said to work as good PR for those who need to dehumanise the Iraqi people for the folks back home, in order to justify the treatment meted out to them, even when it’s not as atrocious as that represented in the images. But when a newspaper editor can’t tell the difference between photographs of war and hardcore pornography, there’s clearly a question to be asked about the degree to which all photo-

graphs of war simply satisfy the salacious desire of the media and its consumers.

The control of images of war is still an extremely closely monitored subject for national governments. During the Falklands War, it took two weeks for any images to get back from the South Atlantic, and very little of that conflict was seen by the British public. Ten years later, the first Gulf War took place live on TV, this time as a totally aesthetic experience to do with coloured lights and nightvision.

The moving image obviously has more immediacy than the still photograph these days, which is why some armies have their own PR outfits and produce content for the parallel army of embedded journalists to use in their newscasts.

The Kosovan Liberation Army was very quick off the mark in this regard, arming itself with DV cameras and portable Sony editing decks at the height of the war in Kosovo in the late 1990s, in order to produce its own pre-edited propaganda packages that could be dropped into news bulletins internationally. It emerged that some of the atrocities they claimed to have documented were slightly altered for the camera, but it was never established whether the staging or reconstruction of war crimes means that they didn’t actually happen. The point is surely that it doesn’t matter whether they happened or not, but that one can demonstrate that it’s entirely plausible that they could have, and that this is what they would look like if they had, and this is how you would feel. This should apply to all cases of photographic manipulation too. In many ways, Jeff Wall’s comical photomontage Dead Troops Talk is as truthful about war as any ‘real’ war photograph.

The Imperial War Museum sends artists to document wars, and these days it’s become a tradition that the pictures they take are able to question the wisdom of the campaigns to which they bear witness. But the fact that artists – artists! – are allowed access to the battlefield is good PR, because it shows that we’re not being lied to about what’s happening out there, and that after all, We live in a democracy, unlike Them.

There’s a strange relationship between war art and photojournalism; both tend to end up being printed in Sunday supplements or other features magazines; both are aestheticised attempts to show the cruelty of war by people caught up in it.

The main difference appears to be that the artists are often very happy to leave at the first available opportunity, whereas the photojournalists keep coming back for more.

the vacuum

by richard west

How I had Greatness Thrust Upon Me This time last year a journalist from the Observer called me and said that I had been chosen to join a select group called The Future 500. She just wanted to check a few details so I could be included in a special supplement her newspaper would be publishing to mark the occasion. I was a bit sceptical, not least because she always added the name of a cognac before 'The Future 500'. So I asked her what being in this group entailed. She assured me that she was a journalist involved in 'editorial' at the Observer and, perhaps slightly impatiently, because she had 499 other people to speak to, told me that all I had to do was confirm my name and what I did.

Then, in a couple of weeks, if I bought the Observer I would find my name 'up in lights'. So I spelled out my name and what I did. I thought I could always deny it later or refuse to co-operate if they said I had to do something unpleasant. It only took a second.

A few weeks later the Observer was in fact published with a supplement entitled 'The Future 500 Rising Stars'. It was obviously promotional fluff with a series of articles it was hard to imagine anyone reading. My name appeared in small print in a spread called 'The Next 400' in the art and design category.

Unexpectedly, I had heard of some of the other people on the list. Even more strangely, a couple of people actually mentioned that they had seen me in it.

But I soon forgot about it.

Then I started to receive emails.

The first one said that they were pleased to have me as 'one of their elite' and that now I could join their special network.

In fact they said that I 'could have full access to all its life-changing potential'.

I ignored it, but the emails kept coming. They said they wanted to send me a present (a bottle of cognac). They started to invite me to events attended by other members of the network. Then the emails started to be personalised; they were sent by a woman called Delphine ('Hello Richard West') who would say things like, 'hope to see you at our networking breakfast'. She worked for a PR company called White Label. When we decided to do an issue of the Vacuum about PR I thought I should find out more about the Future 500.

I wanted to know two things in particular: what was the connection between cognac and the people on this list and why had I been chosen to be among them? So I phoned Delphine, whose mobile number was at the end of her emails. She was on a bus at the time. She didn't know who I was, and sounded slightly paranoid, 'How did you get my number?' she asked. I said I wanted to

find out about the Future 500 network and I wanted to meet her and talk to her about it. She said if I wanted to talk about it then I should speak to the Future 500's PR people. This threw me a little because I didn't expect the PR people to have their own PR people. 'I thought you were the PR people?' I said. But by this stage she had got off the bus, through her front door and tapped my name into a computer and suddenly her voice changed, 'But you are in the Future 500!' She said, as if she had just discovered I was a long-lost relative. 'I thought you wanted to join, but if you are in the network then of course we can meet, that's so great!'

We met in a cafe in London's West End. I bought a little dictaphone to record the interview, which she was reluctant to let me use, but I explained I was no good at taking notes. Delphine was in her 30s, wore a leather jacket and was French, which you could tell from her accent and strange turn of phrase. Although, as I was to find out, public relations is a bit like a foreign language anyway. I asked her what her company did. She said they were 'an experiential brand consultancy'. I asked her what that meant and she said, 'Basically, the guys worked many years at Cake. So Red, Cake, a lot of agencies, are our clients basically, and when they've got things which are very much experiential and about making it happen, then they come to White Label.'

Only the experience of watching the programmes of Chris Morris had partially immunised me against this madness and meant I could stop myself laughing uncontrollably, which was fortunate because there was a lot more to come. Delphine was also a deeply serious person who would probably not have liked me laughing at her crazy talk. In fact, she was so focused I discovered that if you spoke to her long enough she would repeat the same phrases and stories as if she were a robot or a spy that had only partially learnt her cover story. This meant that she told me at least three times how good this cognac was in cocktails, even though she didn't drink much and never would have realised this until she was shown how delicious they were. I asked her how I had been selected for the Future 500, she said, 'I think when you go for innovators, for movers and shakers, I don't know these people are necessarily the kind of people who want to comment themselves. Because when you are an innovator you create a bit of a buzz about what you do and it's much more about word of mouth so I think

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one or the Observer found you. It's a big process slimming down the hundreds and hundreds of applicants. We helped out with the sifting process but it's mainly the cognac and the Observer, ultimately mainly the cognac that has the choice because they want certain people to be the ambassadors for their brand.'

Caroline Stillwell of Manning, Selvage & Lee you were nominated by someone who had identified who were the innovators, who were the shakers.'

This might mean almost anything so I asked her what this had to do with cognac and she told me a long story about how she had gone to France to see the company and the very special old men who made the cognac. Apparently, cognac was a blend of the best ingredients and this made it just like the Future 500. Eventually I began to feel that my brain was melting from all this robot talk but I could endure a couple more answers. I asked her why the Future 500 was happening in the UK and not in France where this cognac had come from. She explained, 'I think England is very powerful, they don't stop at the rules. It's like this TV programme where people come and change your house. As soon as you say "I don't like pink" they're going to use pink just to show you that it can work and you might really like it. That's what I like about England, it's always pushing the boundries. In France for example with art, there is good art and bad art, whereas in England Banksy became hyper-successful doing graffitis in the street. That English eccentricity or avant guard, they don't stop at the limits.'

Fortunately, not long after this she stopped talking. I decided to go to the British Library to recover and to find out more about this cognac. There is a section in the library where they keep all the latest industry market research.

From a report on the spirits market I learnt that cognac is a subsection of the brandy market and that in 2002 in Northern Ireland we drank 408,000 litres of brandy. The challenge for the brandy merchants, identified by this research, is that its drinkers are old, the young barely touch the stuff. The 'consumer trends' section said 'there has been much talk among cognac producers about the "hip hop" crowd' following the release of a song by Busta Rhymes and P. Diddy in

2003. 'Their lyrics included references to "Henny" and "Remi", introducing young hip hop fans to these cognac brand names and providing the drink with a welcome youth association.' The research also shed some light on Delphine's enthusiasm for cognac in cocktails because if hip hop didn't work then 'the cocktail trend' was '...believed to have resulted in increased sales of brandy in the UK.'

Delphine had painted me a picture of a lot of old artisans pottering around fields and forests under the guidance of a benevolent patriarch. The market research gave a different picture.

Since 1964 the company has been part of global conglomerates, first the Canadian firm Hiram Walker, which owned various whiskeys as well as Drambuie and Kahlua. In 1986, it was sold to the British company Allied Lyons, owner of such brands as Babycham and Harvey's sherry as well as Dunkin' Donuts. In 1993 Allied Lyons merged with Pedro Domecq to make it the second largest alcoholic drinks company in the world. Most recently, in 2005, it was sold with a selection of other spirits to Beam Global. Beam Global is 'part of the diversified US group Fortune Brands Inc.' which specialises in premium spirits, home and hardware, and golf. The company is based in Illinois, has 31,000 employees and in 2007 made $8.56 billion.

This information somewhat undermined my impression of this cognac as a small specialist company. It also presented a frightening prospect of tiers and tiers of public relations people ascending to the owners of this giant company in Illinois. Delphine, it seemed, was just a PR footsoldier. When I first spoke to her she had referred me to another PR firm called Manning, Selvage & Lee PR so I called them and spoke to Caroline Stillwell who agreed to meet me the next day and tell me more about the Future 500.

Caroline was a confident and articulate woman in her 20s. She gave straight and unembarrassed answers to my questions. How had I been selected to be part of the Future 500?

'You were either nominated by some-

I didn't like the sound of being 'an ambassador for their brand'. No one had mentioned it when I was contacted by the Observer. What does it mean to be an ambassador for a brand anyway?

Caroline explained the idea to me. Her company works for Nestle and for one of their campaigns they 'bought' a woman called Tana Ramsay 'for X amount of pounds' because they had identified her as the kind of person Nestle was trying to reach. 'So for this cognac, they are trying to reach people like yourselves, so that's why you are on the network. We want you to be associated with this cognac.

You stand for the brand.' This gave me the disconcerting feeling that I had given something to this huge multi-national without realising it. I seemed to have been transformed into some kind of abstract commodity that could be traded by a PR company.

To get an idea of the money involved I asked Caroline how much the Future 500 campaign was worth. She wouldn't tell me, other than to say that Future 500 was the principle campaign for the brand (rather than advertising) and that they had been given more money this year than the previous year, implying it had been successful. The market research in the library had said that the brand spent ÂŁ219,000 in advertising in 2003 and ÂŁ360,000 in 2004. Presumably by 2008 that figure would be larger. Caroline was also insistent that this expenditure represented value for money: 'As PRs we say "PR's much better than advertising because we get you editorial coverage." The client will send us KPIs [Key Performance Indicators], they'll say "We want to see 5 pieces of coverage is national newspapers, 20 in regional and 100 online" and we'll have to match those targets. That's how PR would be measured value-wise.'

Specifically the PR company has employed the Observer: 'It's really a partnership, we paid them a fee, they printed a supplement and they mention, where possible the Future 500. This year we've been doing advertorial with them. They're our media support, they should be writing about this cognac, as and when possible. And they should support the campaign and what it stands for.

What happens if they don't?

They get told off (laughs). That's part of the partnership, you have to trust they will give you what you want.

The Observer have been great, they have supported the campaign and that's why this year we are using them again. Obviously in terms of the partnership, if they weren't performing their duty then you would have to address that, to reiterate that we are paying them a fee to support

us, so that job should be done. That would be indicated if they weren't doing their job.'

So the answers to my questions were something like this. I was selected for the Future 500 because I represented a market that a cognac company would like to sell their product to. The value of my association with this company is that my reputation (not something I have ever assumed was worth anything to anyone), and that of the other 499 people in the group, can be appropriated to infiltrate the editorial of the national press and get the name of a cognac mentioned by association. This is worth more than the cost of advertising the product. In exchange I was offered a bottle of cognac that I didn't want. What I thought was a mildly flattering inclusion in a pointless roll of honour instead confirms that identity theft isn’t limited to those who want to despoil your bank account.

the vacuum

by ruth graham

REPUBLICAN PUBLIC RELATIONS e An Interview with Danny Morrison by Ruth Graham.

RG: How did you become interested in communications and public relations?

DM: Well, I was mainly interested in writing but I was also interested in building transmitters. Between 1968 and 1969 there was a group of us who were amateur ‘Hams’ and when Radio Ulster went off the air around midnight, we came onto their frequency on the medium waveband. Looking back, that was an indication of being interested in communications as well.

In 1971, I remember borrowing money off my sister to buy a typewriter. My intention was to use it to write fiction but the first thing I wrote on it was a letter to the Irish News complaining about the shooting of a civilian by the British Army on the New Lodge Road.

In my late teens I was interned in Long Kesh and I was asked to write statements on behalf of prisoners, then in 1975, I was asked if I would edit Republican News, so I jumped in there and tried to modernise the paper.

The British Government tried to close the paper down and arrested the typists, drivers and most of the Editorial board.

They also arrested the entire Executive of Belfast Sinn Fein. I was the only one who escaped the initial arrests, so in 1978 I edited Republican News on the run, and then I was arrested and charged with IRA membership and conspiracy. The charges were later dropped but the outing in court forced us to become public. Until then, if you had come to interview me, I would have given a false name. Once we were charged we thought, “ frig it – they’ve already given out our names”.

So when we got out of jail, I was publicly the Editor of the paper and at the next Ard Fheis I became National Director of Publicity for Sinn Fein.

Republican News and An Phoblacht merged in 1979 and I was Editor of the newly merged paper till 1982 when I was elected in Mid Ulster. I was Director of Publicity until 1990 when I was arrested and charged in relation to the alleged kidnapping of a police informer, Sandy Lynch. This is currently the subject of an appeal. I was lured to that house to organise a Press Conference so my interest in publicity cost me an 8-year jail sentence!

We managed to get a number of scoops. Brigadier James Glover, Commander of Land Forces, wrote a secret assessment of the IRA and we got our hands on it and published it in An

Phoblacht. His assessment contradicted everything that British propaganda was saying … that the IRA was run by Godfathers, mindless thugs and hooligans, etc. He said “the IRA was a wellorganised, military organisation and the members were dedicated, highly trained and drawn mostly from the working class” and “the IRA do not fit the picture depicted by current Government propaganda.” It was magnificent stuff.

Because we were under the umbrella of the Republican Movement we had constant access to IRA exclusives. For example, after the H Block escapes in 1983, we had access to Bik McFarlane and Seamus McIllwaine both of whom had escaped. All that helped sell the paper and made it sexy.

RG: It’s interesting that while you were trying to bring PR into the Republican Movement you were also battling against increasingly sophisticated state propaganda.

DM: Oh unbelievably … One of the most consistent features of being interviewed on radio and television was that we were treated as hostile subjects. In a way that backfired, because the grilling that we were given actually improved our performance. It was a kind of training and it got to the stage where I never feared any interview on any subject because I was always trying to read the mind of the journalist, anticipate the question before it arose and have the answer ready.

It’s worth remembering that RTE introduced Section 31 of the Broadcast Ban on Sinn Fein back in 1973 and the British Government didn’t introduce its ban until 1988. During the 80s there was a campaign to end censorship in the South and journalists were saying, “Let us at them and we will destroy them.

They are surrounded in myth because we can’t interview them.” Connor Cruise O’Brien, the Minister of Post & Telegraphs who had introduced the original censorship, retorted with a statement that basically said, ‘catch yourselves on … they will run rings around you and they will only gain support.’ Their argument wasn’t for fairness, impartiality and proper standards of journalism … acting as the Fourth Estate, mediating between Government and whatever other forces there are in society … their attitude was “We’ll do the job for them.” Cruise O’Brien didn’t trust them to do that.

That’s not to say that we haven’t

done deplorable interviews. Like any other party we’ve shot ourselves in the foot and sometimes it was personally and emotionally difficult, like after Enniskillen: there was no way that I’d do an interview immediately after it; not because I was trying to evade the brutality of what had happened but because people hadn’t even buried their dead and to speak then would have added an additional aspect of callousness. Regardless of how you portray yourself at an official level, deep inside you cannot justify everything that has happened in the conflict. Because you are part of an organisation, for a variety of reasons, you stick by the regiment.

What I’m saying might sound like a gloss to people who are opposed to the Republican Movement, but you knew that what had happened wasn’t a reflection upon what was desired and that within the Republican Movement there were a lot of people who had suffered and that the struggle itself had emerged from what we considered to be an unjust situation.

One of my biggest criticisms of the media was that, in a sense, it was they who presented and forced us into appearing to be proxy IRA spokespersons. I would call a press conference on public transport or pensions, Adams would get up and the first question would be, “the IRA said such-and-such last week; what’s your response?” We supported the IRA but we wanted to show there was more to Sinn Fein than a group that seemed to be in a junior

position to the IRA. This suited Thatcher when she introduced the Broadcast Ban. She said she wanted to cut off the oxygen of publicity for the IRA but it was actually the media that had forced us into that situation.

They never allowed us to talk about social or economic issues.

Some of the media have this ‘holier than thou’ belief in themselves and I’ll give you an example of this hypocritical attitude.

Bobby Sands died on 5th May and during the 7 months of the Hunger Strike our office was open 24 hours a day and we basically slept on the floor. We had been expecting Bobby to die for 2 or 3 days and around midnight I decided to nip home. Around 1.20am a fellow came to the door to tell us that Bobby was dead. I went straight back to the office where we had 4 phones going at once and a queue of journalists outside.

There were gun battles, bin lids banging, rosaries being said at one corner, petrol bombs going off in another, smoke and gunfire all over West Belfast. We worked intensely throughout the night. Around 6.30am, Richard McAuley who worked with me said, “the BBC are here and want an interview” I went outside and it was Kate Adie. Her first question was, “How do you feel now that you’ve helped to kill your best friend?” and that was the tenor of the rest of the interview. I went at her hammer and tongs, then it ended. She said, “Thank you Mr Morrison”, got into her car and effed off.

I asked Richard what he thought and

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of us went to University or trained in media. It was all done on the basis of observation.

RG: Did you have anything to do with the image side of it? Did you advise Gerry Adams what to wear?

he said, “Danny, that was the best interview you have ever done.”

Shortly after, I got a phonecall from Clive Ferguson of the BBC asking for an interview. I told him that I’d just done one. He said, “Yes, but there were problems … we really think you should do an interview though … it’s important to get something out.” When I got down to the BBC I said to him, “I just did an interview with Kate Adie” and he said, “Yes, but the film didn’t come out”. This was all off-camera and I said, “Clive, in

she compared the British army - pinkcheeked lads, squat and muscly – to the locals who were pasty-faced, lankhaired young women, with pushchairs of mewling children. And skinny fellas with bony shoulders and pipe-cleaner legs. All the older women smoked and their skin was shiny from anti-depressants. She doesn’t mention interviewing me or the interview not coming out.

This was a woman who was a senior reporter for the BBC with a responsibility to report the truth. What this autobiog-

DM: I remember going to do the first election broadcast wearing jeans and a sweater and somebody said, “You’ll have to put on a shirt and tie. People will be proud of you if you’ve dressed up.” So, before I did the broadcast I borrowed a shirt and tie and a different jacket. Up until then I wore DM boots, jeans and a duffel coat. I didn’t think in terms of a sexy image – that came about rather slowly and it was a bit of a nuisance, to be honest.

The interesting thing was that Republicans were attacked by the media for wearing suits - “Look at them in their Armani suits – who do they think they are!” None of us had Armani suits but it revealed a lot about the attitude of the media. They thought that we came from the ghetto and that we shouldn’t be dressing like them: we should be sticking to our corduroys and denim. It revealed a real bourgeois mentality and superciliousness.

RG: When you were involved, PR was becoming more important in politics. Did you pick up any tips from the opposition … Saatchi perhaps?

DM: Oh no…not at all. We would just sit in the pub on a Thursday after Republican News was published, have a drink, read the paper and listen to people. They liked letters pages and if there was a big IRA headline, it sold more copies. We wanted to try and create serious political debate though and book reviews like ‘The Women’s Room’

by Marilyn French sparked a barrage of letters on the abortion issue. We also did a feature on gay rights and that created a big debate.

It was a different era back then, and there was a need for a party paper; especially when Adam’s statements about social or economic issues weren’t carried by the media. Nowadays Sinn Fein has no impediments on RTE, BBC or UTV. Back then a party newspaper had a vital role in terms of communications with your base and holding things together.

RG: Your comment about the ballot box in one hand and the Armalite in the other is often quoted. Is there another quote that you would prefer to be associated with?

your experience, how many times have you known that to happen?” Now, he didn’t say ‘never’ but he mouthed it. I believe that because I got the better of her she ditched that film.

Now, fast-forward 15-20 years. I read her autobiography, ‘The Kindness of Strangers’, in which she describes the hunger strike as “Bog-trotting stuff.”

She writes about sneaking into Bobby Sands’ wake “in a headscarf and scruffy anorak”. She said he looked like a banana and as if the local embalmer had used furniture varnish on his face. Earlier

raphy reveals is a mentality and a prejudice that do a disservice, not only to us but to the British public, because it was their sons in the British Army that were getting killed. She did not describe what was going on … she perpetuated a false analysis of the conflict.

RG: With everything that was against you and with so few resources how did you manage your PR in such a sophisticated way?

DM:

It was a learning curve. None

DM: Oh … that’s the one that’s in the Oxford Book of Quotes. I hadn’t planned to speak at that particular debate at the Ard Fheis. Bobby Sands had been elected and had died and the electoral law had been changed to prevent any other prisoner from standing. There were rumours that James Prior, the Secretary of State was going to hold elections to an Assembly but under our constitution the party had a self-imposed ban from taking part in such elections. We had decided that we wanted to have the option open to us so that we could read the situation and make a decision without having to come back to a special conference. We

thought the Ard Fheis vote would be a cakewalk but a lot of people disagreed and didn’t want to go down that road. It looked like we were losing the debate. I got up to speak and that statement came out. In a sense, I was trying to play to ‘the gallery’ to IRA supporters. I was trying to say that yes, the armed struggle could continue but there is room here for an electoral campaign which would help the struggle overall. The vote was swung, we won it and the rest is history.

RG: Sinn Fein PR is almost like a double PR. It’s targeted at those inside the movement as well as those outside it.

DM: Yes, that’s right. That’s why it can sometimes look bizarre to an outsider who judges it in conventional terms. It’s more complicated than that.

When we started winning elections the Southern Government were worried.

One of their propaganda slogans was, “the IRA today are not like the good old IRA”. We decided to respond in an unusual way and brought out a booklet containing the worst aspects of the IRA campaign from 1919 to 1921. For example, they shot an informer but he didn’t die and he was rushed to hospital then they went in and wheeled him outside and shot him dead! They shot a horse because it had been involved in delivering coal to the local RIC barracks!

We called the pamphlet The Good Old IRA and when you looked at it in comparison to the IRA today you could say, “they were fuckin worse!”

In a way, I’m still involved with publicity and still get passionate when watching somebody going to town on Gerry Adams or Mitchell McLaughlin on television. Before she joined Sinn Fein, Caitriona Ruane was the director of Feile an Phobail and she was interviewed on RTE with Sinead O’Connor who had pulled out of one of our concerts at the festival. Sinead wanted to bring victims of IRA punishment beatings onto the stage and I had contacted her and said, “Sinead, this is more complicated that you think. You could be bringing someone who has killed a mother and child onto the stage and her relatives might be in the audience. Is that what you want?” I’ve made up with Sinead since, but she called me everything and said I tried to intimidate her. She also got very nasty with Caitriona Ruane who was live on the programme with her. The interviewer said, “Now Caitriona, would you still be interested in inviting Sinead back to the Festival”. Your gut reaction after everything that had been said was, “Fuck Sinead O’Connor”. I was saying to myself, “Caitriona, think very carefully.

Just say, “yes”. And Caitriona turned round and said, “Yes, of course she’s welcome.” And that was the right PR response!

the vacuum

by ruth graham

Soft days for hard news Ruth Graham interviews Gerry Fitzgerald, picture editor of the Belfast Telegraph on the relationship betwwen public relations and the press.

RG: First of all, can you tell me how you got into photography?

GF: My brother in law was a keen amateur photographer and when I was 14, he gave me a camera to bring with me to Donegal. He had a darkroom at home so when I got back he showed me how to process and make prints. I thought it was magical and decided to pursue photography as a career so I took my A Levels then went on to the Art College in Belfast where I did an art degree. In my final year, I concentrated on photography.

After that I went to Dublin to work as a freelance photographer, mostly with the Irish Times. However, the National and International Media were looking for pictures of the Troubles so I went back to Belfast and freelanced with an agency called Pacemaker Press, which is still going today. I was with them for 3 years then I was offered a job as a news photographer with the Belfast Telegraph.

That was in 1979 and I’ve been there ever since. I was on the road for about 17 or 18 years and I’ve been Picture Editor for the past 15 years.

RG: It must have been an interesting time to be involved in news photography.

GF: I was young and it was a real adrenalin rush. I’d be a liar if I said there wasn’t a buzz about it.

RG: Has news photography has changed much since the Troubles.

GF: Oh completely - in those days newspaper photography over here was the daily grind of news, news and more news about bombings, explosions and riots. Now newspaper photography is back to what it was in all the other areas apart from Northern Ireland, which is a reflection of people’s lives - the good, the bad, the ugly, the joyous, the humorous – just a mirror of daily life.

RG: For a lot organisations, public relations is centred around trying to get their company profiled in the media. What about the Belfast Telegraph and public relations – is it a major issue – is there an image that they are trying to show the public?

GF: The thing about PR people in public relations companies is that they are in the business of promoting their clients - and themselves to a certain extent. They can do that through newspapers with pictures and stories which they think we might be interested in. Now for every 100 PR shots that come into a newspaper office there’s about 1% of them that get in, so you’re talking about one in a hundred.

It’s not a great strike for PR companies but they keep blasting away and obviously what they are trying to do is to get a different angle on things. There’s also organisations that decide to break a news story through a PR company so that they can stage manage it – now that happens quite a bit.

RG: Yes, I was thinking about ‘spin’ and ‘propaganda’ as well … what do you think is the difference between the two?

GF: There’s no difference … they are both doing the same thing. I suppose ‘spin’ doesn’t have the same connotations as ‘propaganda’ so it’s used more nowadays. Propaganda sounds as if you are doing something that you shouldn’t be doing whereas ‘spin’ suggests that you are telling the truth but you just are spinning it in a certain direction. The thing about ‘spin’, in my opinion anyway, is that it’s not what you say – it’s what you leave out that makes the difference.

People used to say that the camera never lies but that’s totally untrue – the camera has been lying since photography was invented. You could put your finger up to your eye right now and I could take a photograph of you just brushing away a piece of dirt from your eye, but you could also appear to be crying.

RG: I was at a talk the other night and there was an interesting point made about the selection of media images – remember Ayatollah Khomeini and how the press all latched onto a fairly grim, ogre-like image of him and this was the one that was always used whereas with Bobby Sands apparently there was frustration because the only photo that the press had was one of him smiling and that wasn’t the image that most of the papers wanted to show.

GF: I once did a picture of an IRA Hunger Striker’s funeral. His two children were at the funeral and one of them had her head lowered right down to the coffin and her brother was standing behind. They were both crying. Directly behind them were two IRA men in full military combat gear. The Daily Mail used the picture and they kept in the two IRA guards because they wanted to make the point that this was not an ordinary funeral; that it was the funeral of an IRA terrorist who had killed himself on hunger strike. Now, a newspaper in New York used the same picture but they cropped the two guys out which gave it a different slant – it suddenly moved away from being the funeral of a terrorist to something completely different. Yes, you can obviously manipulate pictures either as you are taking them or afterwards by selecting what you keep in and what you leave out.

Nowadays with computers and digital photography you can do almost anything.

RG: Have you mainly been involved in documentary news photography or

have you done much along the lines of weddings or glamour shots?

GF: I’ve done pretty much everything. The thing about working in newspapers is that newspaper photographers are the GPs of photographers and you have to be able to do everything. At a moments notice you have to adapt from being a hard news photographer to taking glamour shots, sport, fashion, etc, and this is what attracts a lot of photographers into newspapers - you’re going to do everything.

RG: Does the Belfast Telegraph have an ‘in-house’ style or image?

GF: We are no different from most other regional newspapers in that 90% of our pictures will be ‘people based’ because we are trying to reflect the society in which we live and the society is made up of people. Our style is ‘people’ - people doing things, winning things, funny things and news things – sport as well. Although there’s a lot of sport on television that one arresting still image can often steal a march for what’s on TV. The television footage of the Twin Towers was incredible but what most people remember are the still pictures. If you ask people what they remember about a momentous event, such as Vietnam, or the Omagh bombing or the death of Princess Diana, what they come up with, 9 times out of 10, is an image from a newspaper.

A picture is immediate and that’s why it’s such a powerful medium.

RG: Do you think that the role of the Press has been compromised by in inclusion of PR or free advertising?

No, I don’t think so. We would only use a story from a PR company if we

feel it would be of interest to our readers. Every story is selected on merit and there is probably more that ends up in the bin than put into the paper. If it’s not newsworthy we ditch it. We get stories about new beers and new hamburgers that many not sound interesting without the PR slant but if they are presented in the right way and if we think it would interest the readers then we use it.

RG: Do you think that PR is a good thing in general?

Yes, it is a good thing in general. Newspapers need PR to generate stuff and the media would be a less vibrant place without it. It is a mutually beneficial relationship though.

Have there been incidences where PR companies have come up with scantily clad women to promote their story?

Those days are over now. That was something that was more common back in the 70s and it really doesn’t happen these days. You don’t get women in bikinis sprawled over cars any more. Fashion is a bit different. If you are covering a fashion show then the models might reveal more but that depends on what the fashion is. Gratuitous images of women for PR purposes are a thing of the past.

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Hard days for soft news event. I would have reservations now looking back about spending time on either Nicotine or Alcohol. We never got involved in politics, though I remember at the hight of the troubles we had a call from Wallace Clark wanting to know if we would look after the promotion of the RUC and within a week we had a call from a certain person who shall remain nameless wanting to know if we would act for the IRA. We turned down both sides. So we kept well outside the political sphere.

We where about the promotion of companies in difficult times. We where involved in the setting up of the Ireland fund. I also had a committee set up in Dublin called Movement for peace in Ireland. We where involved at all times in bringing people together toward a rational and good cause.

Interview with Gordon Duffield, founder of the first PR firm in Northern Ireland - Irish Public Relations - in 1965.

By Jason Mills JM: Tell me a bit about the early years of your PR work.

GD: I did a lot of government work and opening up agencies such as the Labour Relations Agency and a whole spate of companies. For example there was the Milk Marketing Board and we helped launch their yogurt company.

JM: How did you raise awareness for your clients?

GD: We had a unique selling proposition in that we ran the only press club, a thing called the Monday Club which ran throughout the years of the Troubles up until maybe the early ‘90’s.

JM: And this was a kind of weekly gettogether of press and PR people in the Europa Hotel?

GD: It was more than that, because it became a kind of home for international press people when they came to Northern Ireland. It was a meeting place for the whole press corps and somewhere foreign journalists could meet their local counterparts and gather information and also come into contact with some clients of ours. We had a tremendous support from the press because they didn’t want to go out to stories all the time and they wanted someone who could contain a number of key people within a room. We didn’t operate just for one client at a time - sometimes we would invite two or three people who were clients in different areas, so it was a collecting pot for stories of all kinds.

JM: Did you find that the more commercial side you were representing got sidelined by the hard news agenda of bombings and shootings and the?

GD: Well, largely speaking ours was soft news and we had to fight against the fact that the terrorists on both sides would get coverage based on the presence of TV cameras and press photographers whereas we had to win the right to get coverage. We were quite imaginative in some cases.

JM. Did you feel that photographs were a key part of the PR mechanism?

GD: Yes, in many ways the photographic corps was at the heart of the work of the Club – I think we were more indebted to photographers than to reporters. We were always very conscious of having a photograph to offer to the press.

JM: Do any particular examples of photo shoots spring to mind?

GD: One of my directors in the early days did some work for the Hotels Association and had a topless girl running around in the grounds of the Wellington Park hotel, so that was a bit avant-garde for those days.

JM.Where you still involved in PR after the ceasefires?

GD: yes indeed, the whole mood had switched from Troubles related to something much more peaceful. So in that sense it became a more normal operation.

Our big client during the Troubles had been British Airways because they where identified by the terrorists as being a target. So we ran a lot of promotions for new routes being opened from Northern Ireland.

JM:You where also involved in Castlecourt.

GD: I devised the name Castlecourt to represent two things; castle being bold and a big adventure and court from the fact they had an atrium in the centre of the scheme. I fought for the name because castle junction was a well known area of Belfast to many people. This was an association we wanted to replicate in the name Castlecourt. One of my sadder moments in regards to Castlecourt I had the first page headline is the Belfast Telegraph on two successive tuesdays, the first was to annocance the setting up of Castlecourt and the second to sadly announce the demise of Brands, a major local company.

They had fought the Troubles in many ways. Castlecourt got 10 million pounds from the government for setting up and this throttled some of the local initiates like the Brand group. So it was both good news and bad news reflected on to different weeks and we where carriers of both. Our job was also to find a new place for smithfield market adjacent to Castlecourt, but in retrospect it never caught the

imagination in the way the old smithfield had.

Castlecourt was a tremendous development and very beneficial to Belfast. The many changes involved where quite controversial at the time.

As a company we where based in the Midland building at the time. We had invited all the major cross channel trading units to come across and see Castlecourt.

The IRA heard that this happening and where determined to put paid to Castlecourt. But the RUC built a ring of Steel around the city centre and the bomb that was planned couldn't get in, they had to leave it somewhere and by chance left it outside the Midland building, I came back and found I had no office.

JM: What methods would you have used to insure that controversies didn't get into the media?

GD: Just by putting forward a better idea to journalists and also sometimes to government departments. We where a mediator between the press organisations and the statuary bodies so in many cases we where a meeting place for people on both sides of a divided community. We would rationally put the outcome of these talks to the media, we would promote the good aspects of any new development.

JM: Is there any work that you woulnt have undertaken in PR or turned down for ethical reasons.

GD:We didn't do politics or the church as such. Providing what was being done was legitimate we tried to offer a hand of help. I would like to say we turned down Nicotine but in fact we applied for a job with Gallaghers. They offered to buy the concept that we had offered to them but i didn't just want to sell an idea and walked away with it. The concept was to run a sportsman's ball every year and build up a major social publicity

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Bob Log III The Black Box September 25th 2008

REVIEWS

Now, most of my friends would call me a feminist….so it’s with slight trepidation I admit (if you know me, you’ll know this already) I’ve done nothing but talk about how good this gig was. In fact, it’s teetering on tipping Pulp in the Ulster Hall (oh, so long ago) off the number 1 slot in my favourite ever gig list. “ Oh my Gawd, Bob Log, how you play the guitar so goood?!!” was his own coda to a song, and it’s a refrain I’ve been singing ever since.

For those of you who don’t know him, Bob Log III is a be-helmeted, jump-suitwearing blues player from Arizona. Cited on his record labels website as having a monkey paw for a hand after a terrible accident as a child, anyone who stumbled across him, would be forgiven for thinking that he was slightly insane. But no, no less a personage than Tom Waits wants to be him: “I like people who glue macaroni on to a piece of cardboard and paint it gold. That’s what I aspire to basically….It’s the loudest strangest stuff you ever heard” The man has one hell of a stage presence.

It was one of those rare gigs where you were impelled towards the stage, pulled in by Bob’s charisma, humour and sheer enthusiasm for what he doesraucous, thrashy, punky blues- a sort of distorted Bo Diddly on speed. He plays a kick-drum and a cymbal with his feet and sings through a microphone in his helmet. Which only makes him more enigmatic- despite his claims that it’s to create a barrier between himself and the girls who sit on his knee during “I Want Your Shit On My Leg”. Though to be honest I’m pretty sure there was plenty of men who would have jumped at the chance… or have given him a “Moob Scotch”… My friend and I just kept laughing with delight at every song, and watched the crowd around him thicken as the momentum built up.

The man himself (I met him without his helmet, and can confirm he is neither ugly nor one of The Strokes) is pure edgy, manic energy. He had me laughing like a star struck babbling idiot (Oh My God, Bob Log! How’d you play the guitar so good?? …I have a feeling that may actually be a quote from a groupie). I’ve met quite a few so-called “rawk” stars in my time, thanks to a long stint working for The Limelight and at festivals, but Lord, this man floored me. He asked me 10 questions in the space of 2 minutes, while I was getting Brendan the doorman to take a picture. I may have actually said “I’m a big fan of your work”. Ouch.

Any feminist misgivings I may have had were dispelled by his charm. Which is probably wrong of me, but he was lovely.

Enough raving- if this man appears in Belfast again, I urge you to go see him- I have never left a gig smiling like that.

Which is exactly what the man says he was born to do: “I like driving around and playing guitar, trying to make people shake their asses and smile so much that their faces hurt. We’ve all got to think of something to do with our lives and that’s what I’ve come up with. I can’t make everybody do it, and actually some

people get a little bit upset, but a whole bunch of us are smiling so much our faces hurt the next day - I promise.”

By Valetta Mendelson

Royal Ulster Academy Annual Exhibition The Titanic Drawing Offices September – October 2008 Without doubt, the best thing about the 2008 RUA exhibition is its location, at the Titanic Drawing Offices. The starkness of Queen’s Island and the shipyard itself is compelling: suddenly the sky gets bigger, the twin yellow hulks of Samson and Goliath silently loom up close, and there’s an otherness and an emptiness

and a sadness about the place that you don’t find elsewhere else in this rackety city. Writing about it in its heyday, Kate O’Brien called the shipyard a “cold, cruel field … a place for only mechanised giants to antic in”, and that functional bleakness remains, as well as a sense of almost palpable (functionless) absence. It holds itself aloof.

Inside the red-brick drawing offices, it’s all glorious decrepitude, a jumble of collapsing arches, desiccated wallpaper and stained concrete. The colours! The bleared windows offer glimpses of sky, cindery waste-ground and the docks.

There’s a jagged hole in an elegant old door. Ancient drips of crusty paint run down the walls, and an internal courtyard is overrun with wild buddleias, nettles and elders. It’s gorgeous, poignant. It smells brilliantly bad. In fact, it’s worth going there for the dim, fusty aroma - redolent of old dead days of aspiration and loss - in Titanic shipbuilder Thomas Andrews’ office alone.

Oh yes, the art. I almost forgot that. It’s true, there is fresh, absorbing, engaging

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work here: Paul Seawright, Susan MacWilliam, Alice Maher and more. The old reliables - Shawcross, Ballard and the like - are present too, of course. And Rita Duffy gets her iceberg-in-the-Lagan print over the mantelpiece in Andrews’ room, an ambiguous mark of status befitting the president and curator.

There’s a certain amount of welcome humour going on: Sharon Hay’s convulsing, mechanical cloth rabbits (animated by one of those irresistible ‘press me’ buttons); Peter Surginor’s army of gold-helmeted toy soldiers overrunning a genteel afternoon tea party: on lookout duty in a jam tart, hiding behind a fondant fancy, taking aim from a watchtower of pink wafers. And, in the entrance hall, visitors are greeted with a weird installation representing the Owl and the Pussycat, where the sedate twosome appear to have been re-imagined as acid-tripped Itchy and Scratchy.

Hmmm, cunning placing – is this a statement of intent, a crude challenge to those who would dismiss the RUA as a surfeit of amateurish chocolate-box art?

If it is, the effect wears off almost instantaneously. There’s oodles of the usual material – wonky oils, jazzy watercolours, whimsical montages with blobs of fluorescent paint, the lot. I am sorry. I know we are not supposed to be snotty about this stuff. Rita has expressly said so, and we will not dwell on them further. But they are present, and in great numbers.

Never mind. Come for the exquisite decay of the Drawing Offices and you won’t be disappointed. This is a curious piece of dirty old Belfast the marketers and developers haven’t seized, scrubbed and re-branded – yet. Hurry up and have a look, before they build a shopping centre on it.

By Fionola Meredith

The Drowned World

By Gary Owen Skewiff Theatre Company Old Museum Arts Centre And that is why we can’t have these/Fatally radiant creatures/Walking round the place/ Reminding us how clumsy/And mean-spirited/And graceless/And cowardly/And shapeless/And flabby and foul we all are.

www.sugahfix.com “Your essential online guide to life and style in Belfast and beyond” Marvelling at Posh’s new haircut, I had to wonder: “But what’s the local angle?

What does this latest trend in wigs for WAGs mean for comb-overs at Stormont?

And does Mrs Beckham have Celtic roots?” If, like me, you’ve hungered for answers to such questions, log on and feast your eyes at www.sugahfix.com Sugah Fix’s homepage welcomes you to “your essential online guide to life and style in Belfast and beyond.” Its writers can take a global news story like Victoria’s cropped locks and investigate the implications for the Province by asking award winning local hairdresser, Paul Stafford, what he thinks of it.

But it’s not just hairdressers who need plugs. Sugah Fix offers a confection of advertorials for clothes and cosmetics peddlers too. And lest we forget, the sacred object that is the shoe is placed at the centre of Sugah Fix’s domain. As the writers have cannily realised, all women are fixated on shoes, just as all men are obsessed with football, and all trans-gendered persons worship the football boot.

Illustrated with drawings of lollypopheaded stick figures, the look of the website is Bratz for adultz. Opticians have warned that Sugah’s saccharine imagery may rot your eyes, but squint on the bright side: you can accessorise with the latest must-have spectacles.

Readers seeking to escape the pesky adult world are infantalised from the get go by the cutesy spelling of “sugah”, designed to avoid confusion with “sugar” which is a carbohydrate and thus anathema to all right-thinking females.

Sugah Fix claims to be “your best mate online” and its breezy, conspiratorial writing style is the spoonful of sugar that helps the marketing go down. Lapping up the spoon-fed shopping advice is like being warmly mothered by Candace Bushnell and Helen Fielding. But the last time a mate recommended a shop to me, she wasn’t getting a healthy slice of House of Fraser’s advertising budget,

and unfortunately Ms Bushnell and Ms Fielding aren’t paying me the pocket money to stretch to £400 for a pair of gladiator sandals.

In fairness to Sugah Fix they do also feature the £15 version of the gladiator sandal from Primark. It is fitting that a site treating women like wains should advocate the produce of child labour.

I do feel a common bond with one Sugah Fix writer who wants to emulate her grandmother’s taste in fashion and thoughtfully considers fake fur, just as I seek to follow my granny’s taste for sugar and will experiment with false teeth.

Pandering to the tantrum throwing little girl in all of us is the concept of the “must-have” product. And surprisingly the featured must-have product for the Autumn/Winter season is Lemsip. It’s sensible enough to make my toes uncurl in their sensible gutties, though not enough to uncurl the hair on said toes.

And thanks to the efforts of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in parading purple on the world stage, my prose of said colour is, at least, in fashion.

By Kelly Mullan

“Tara and Julian are on the run - their crime, being beautiful in a world that cruelly punishes beauty. Will Darren, a love-starved ‘citizen’, save them from the vicious reach of Kelly, the ministry enforcer...?”

Skewiff’s production of The Drowned World lost little of its power for being rendered as a bare bones, staged read through. There was more than a little of the otherworldly about it: the use of rostra and a staircase - part of the OMAC ‘s intimate red room – meant that I felt caged in by the action happening on stage. It is a creepy play, one that forces you to interact by suspending disbelief: convincing you that these actors are more beautiful or ugly than they actually are.

Or maybe it’s just that I’m short sighted.

Seriously though, despite the fact that Owen’s writing is heavy-handed in its thematic concerns, it resonates more now than ever in our increasingly celebrity-obsessed society. The language is sometimes beautiful – but to the cost of Gary Owen’s ideas, which feel dense and muddled. Mary Lindsay and Fra Gunn were excellent in the roles of Kelly and the Caliban-esque Darren, by turns threatening and pathetic. Despite being the ‘baddies ‘ of the piece, they made us feel sympathetic towards their plight in a way that Tara (Emma McErlean) and Julian (Nigel O’ Neill) did not. But then I began to wonder- was it just because they were excellent actors or was it that in some part of me, I feel that derision towards so-called ‘beautiful people’ that leads so many of us to slag off the likes of Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie? In the end, I came to the conclusion that Tara and Julian’s parts are less complex and therefore we don’t identify with them as much as we do with the better written characters, Kelly and Darren.

In any case, it is the kind of play where you come away feeling slightly ill, the violence more resonant for being described, not seen. You’re reminded of the fact that in each of us lies a terrible propensity for envy for that which we do not have, whether physically or materially, and of the sometimes horrible actions that we take - or at least contemplate taking - in pursuit of our desires.

The Drowned World, directed by Moninne Dargon, will be staged early next year in a venue TBC.

By Vittoria Cafolla

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