

Beware the fluffy story - the hidden influence of PR agencies - camtarn
http://www.butireaditinthepaper.co.uk/2010/06/15/beware-the-fluffy-story/

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Uhhrrr
It's not just the fluffy stories either:
<http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html>

From the section "Suffer the Little Children": "...the story of babies torn
from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told
the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio
talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations made
against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none had more impact on American
public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from
their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait
City."84

At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos
had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family.
Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US,
who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also
failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah
in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false
testimony."

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camtarn
A nice reinforcement of pg's 2005 article on the PR agencies behind the
'news': <http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

Even human interest stories aren't immune.

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dangrover
"And remember, this ‘fluffy’ little story about the cute little pig we’d all
love to cuddle ended up with a 30% increase in the sales of sausages…"

I love the irony.

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mattdeboard
I'm an in-house PR specialist (i.e. not a contractor/PR agency employee).

Half the fight of getting your story in the press is finding the outlet and
reporter whose beat/publication matches up with the story.

Just because a concept comes from PR doesn't make it a lie, or untrue. Where I
work, there are regularly compelling stories that make excellent human
interest features. I make sure those stories get attention. What is the harm?

Packaging a company's story into a journalist-friendly format doesn't strip
the story of all merit automatically.

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tomjen3
Lying about it does, or at least it should.

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mattdeboard
Sure, but lying about it is a great way to not get published.

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ergo98
The press is incredibly lazy. It isn't limited to just PR fiction that gets
repeated as fact, it's just gross sloppiness that multiplies as each layer of
the press cites the other as a source or an authority.

Shilling, but related - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1958746>

