First For Irresponsible Journalism?

We’re trying to get our heads around something. What exactly is the role of an industry trade magazine/website/forum? Is it to report in a factual way about events from with a BBC methodology and thus provide two sides to a story or is it to report on those which the editorial team have a relationship with and facts are replaced with subjective opinion?

We would think the former would be the responsible way to go. Lets take Brand Republic, the love child of Campaign and its approach to Publicis.

http://www.brandrepublic.com/forums/showthread/68e2bc8a-0061-4d8b-9638-be3ea32bd189

As a host of news and events for the industry it seems strange that some of its editorial team took great pleasure in an agency’s demise which essentially has involved redundancies, troubled lives and a brave set of people fighting at the coal face when all the chips are down.

Surely as an industry information source you would think that it’s the responsibility of Brand Republic to give support to London’s 4th largest agency which has carved many a milestone in the UK’s rich advertising history we enjoy today.

Nope, those at Brand Republic decide to laugh and cheer like a load of dribbling paparazzi at a car crash:

“Agencies cease to exist all the time either by merger or failure. Even really good agencies and Publicis – former home of MFI and Asda – is not one of those. HHCL, GGT, Ammirati Puris Lintas and Bozell to name a few. They have no divine right to exist “

“…the merger of APL and Lowe is very much what this looks like. I had pretty much forgotten about DMB&B, its funny how quick big ad brands disappear”

Whilst this provoked a few aggressive retorts that were unnecessary it surely is irresponsible for what is essentially a news site to get involved with such barbaric and snearing views. When does journalism stop being factual and when does it start having an opinion?

In our view – never, it’s not its job and it’s not its reason for being. Now Brand Republic may claim that these comments were said in a forum and therefore are exempt from such reporting scrutiny. WRONG. It’s merely a host of the main advertising forum around and as such still has a responsibility to (mereley) moderate and moderate alone, unless they are scraping the barrel for content and therefore require provocative and controversial comments to get arguments started – either way, the responsible brand that is Brand Republic is now seen as being an unreliable source due to allowing itself to get caught up in such a debate and throw around what they claim to be true – that Publicis should disappear due to lacking creative talent. Hmm, funny that seeing as they won 2 pencils at the D&AD Awards the evening prior to Brand Republic’s comments. Maybe more time researching facts than slinging mud is required.

But how nice of the First in Advertising, Marketing, Media and PR to share their views. Maybe they would like to share those views with all of those at Publicis.

 

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