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Helsinki Edition
October 1998
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There's always a BUT...
When you ask any PR speaker for information he'll probably say that he'll tell you everything BUT...
"I can give you all facts, BUT I'll have to leave out the classified information."
"You may know anything you want to know, BUT you'll probably understand that I am not authorized to tell you about..."
The most perfect example of PR narrowmindedness I ever heard was the following:
On August 24, 1998, former Dutch statesman Van Kemenade had an investagative interview with the chief of PR department of the Ministry of Defence, Van den Heuvel, about the failures in media policy during and after the fall of Srebrenica.
Van den Heuvel: No, I've never prohibited anybody to speak to the media."
BUT: "There have been some individual cases in which I suggested to officers, who weren't already aware of all facts, to wait to tell their stories to the journalists until they'd sorted everything out."
BUT: "No, I never said to anybody to reveal certain facts or to hush about anything..."
So, now you know why you've been so well informed about what happened in former Yugoslavia and why all the military was so eager to talk to you just about anything....
When you really want to be in the dark about everything, just go and interview any English civil servant at any level of gouvernment. When you're lucky he won't even tell you about the amount of tea he has been drinking during that day. He would probably just refer to an authorized speaker at an press office.
BUT: Don't you think he will tell you anything of some importance anyway...
That's probably the reason that English tabloid journalists mostly turn over to plan B: Gossip and Sensation...
Marjolein Eijkman |
