Defence PR – Breaking news? or Breaking trust!

This morning, I was giving feedback to a Defence PR officer on some ‘news’ links he sent me to use in CONTACT.

He sent the links because he wanted the stories published ‘in the media’ and was frustrated by internal red tape that stymied his efforts to get the message out.

I looked at all the links he sent – many of which would have been handy when I was compiling the latest CONTACT magazine (and one story he was pushing might have been allocated many more pages than it was, had I received these links in time).

Then, I randomly picked another of his stories to critique, and give feedback as to why I probably wouldn’t use it.

I initially dismissed it because it was dated 22 May, making it just a tad old to report as ‘news’ in mid June – especially since it wasn’t ground-breaking or a ‘strong’ news topic.

Anyway, since I was critiquing the story more generally and trying to explain why I thought no serious news outlet would run it, I decided to dig deeper – and at least confirm that no one else published it.

So, using multiple keywords, I spent several minutes over several different Google searches, digging deep.

I eventually found a local charitable association’s newsletter .pdf, and a Facebook post by an organisation quoted in the story – and both reports said this event happened on 26 February – 13 WEEKS BEFORE it was presented on a Defence ‘news’ page as “NEWS!”

So now I have totally and completely lost confidence in that particular news page and, by association, all similar ‘news’ pages recently invented by the separate branches of the ADF.

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Another comment from resident crankyman Sir Jeffrey Armiger – a retired Public Servant with a pet hate for BE – bovine excrement.
Sir Jeffrey Armiger is dedicated to the eradication of BE.
Follow Sir Jeffrey on Facebook here or view his previous diatribes here.

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