Director of Communications and PR analysis...

Returning to:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b017cd0x/One_to_One_Evan_Davis_with_Steve_Henry/

CASE STUDY 1: Alastair Campbell

KEY NOTES [Cited from http://www.alastaircampbell.org/about/]

• Regards himself as a communicator, writer and strategist
• Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman, press secretary and director of communications and strategy. 
• In his time in Downing Street he was involved in all the major policy issues and international crises. He has said that in ten years in the media, and a decade in politics, he saw his respect for the media fall and his respect for politics rise.

Examples of footage watched:

CASE STUDY 2: Peter Mandelson

How to be Peter Mandelson

The article was quite an interesting read [although jaded] insight into the profile of Mandelson. Specific excerpts from the article read:

1. How to face tough questions – and win

There are three things about interviewing Peter Mandelson that stand out, and the prospective MP could do worse than adopt any of them. First is that he doesn't answer the question. All politicians don't do that, though Mandelson doesn't do it more than most, you might say.

Second, when he tires of evasion, his grip on the arguments and the facts is usually formidable, not an invariable rule in this government. Sometimes you wonder if it's only Mandelson who still has a functioning political mind.

Third, and far more entertaining, is the way an interview with him turns, well, not aggressive precisely, more "assertive". Mandelson is audacious enough to tell his interlocutor what the rules of the game are, what he should or shouldn't be asking, "what your readers/listeners/viewers are REALLY interested in", that sort of thing. Yesterday he boldly told Jim Naughtie on The Today Programme that there just wasn't enough time left in the interview to answer questions about the public finances, a remarkable assertion of control. But those exchanges were relatively well tempered. Much more enjoyable, to the point of becoming collectors' items, are Mandelson's increasingly-acrimonious encounters with Naughtie's co-presenter, Evan Davis. Much to Davis' evident irritation, Mandelson always sets the terms of the interview, the pair of them wasting valuable airtime on whether or not he, Mandelson, should be allowed to discuss the Tories' polices.

4. How to get away with things

What sort of satanic pact he made we may not know even when he publishes his memoirs (and what a read those should be), but Lord Mandelson has acquired the sort of immortality generally confined to Greek mythology and science fiction. Politically, he can no longer be harmed, let alone killed. Like Captain Scarlet, he's indestructible.

He has achieved this reversal of status, having been so vulnerable a decade ago that his second "resignation" was purely on reputation, through several factors, some deliberate and others less so.

First and foremost he is a fighter, not a quitter, and there is nothing so admirable to the British as sticking around. Here, as Alan Bennett said, you need only be 90 and capable of eating a boiled egg, and people think you deserve the Nobel Prize.

We also have a taste for brazen chutzpah (returning to Corfu while George Osborne shivered at home) and self-parodic teasing (a pussycat forsooth!). There an arch self-knowingness about the modern Mandy that echoes Tommy Docherty returning to the after dinner speech circuit after being done for perjury with: "Now I know you're not being to believe a word I say ... " and that's almost impossible to resist.

He knows we know he's a rascal, and couldn't care less. There is a law of diminishing returns with moral outrage, and most people long ago grew bored by what he loftily regards as petit bourgeois moralising over his personal ethics and a hands-off relationship with the literal truth.

On the eve of the Labour conference, he didn't rule out remaining in the limelight even under a Conservative administration. He probably had in mind some special envoy position, or a Washington job that involves first-class travel and plenty of dinners with Henry Kissinger. Of course he wouldn't rule out a public position under the Tories; he wouldn't rule out selling the kidneys of orphan babies if he thought it would further his self-interest. He gets away with saying such things because he makes no pretence. He is brazen.

One more thing, too often overlooked. He happens to be, by several light years, the cleverest and most competent Cabinet minister of his generation. Even those who stubbornly cling to ancient loathings acknowledge this, and in troublesome times any amount of naughtiness will be overlooked if the perpetrator appears to know what he's about.

5. How to manage the media

According to interviewer Bryan Appleyard, who travelled to China with him for a profile in last weekend's The Sunday Times Magazine, Peter Mandelson has "taken the battle" to the media in a manner far more sophisticated than the crude approach deployed by Alastair Campbell.

"Mandelson draws you in because you desperately want to hear what he will say next," says Appleyard. "He always gives you the impression of having enormous amounts of information at his disposal, so you feel you have to be quite nice to him or else you might miss the story."

While Campbell confronted the media like an angry bouncer, the smiling Mandy holds a guest list that hints at access to the inner sanctum. A dichotomy results whereby reader responses to online press articles about the First Secretary of State often express a uniform hatred for the subject – while the articles themselves are invariably approving. "This interview isn't journalism. It's marketing and PR," fumed one angry respondent to a recent piece in The Guardian in which Mandelson defined himself as a "kindly pussycat".

Journalists are charmed by him because he gives good copy. "Has Peter Mandelson taken some sort of vow never to give a dull interview?" gushed James Kirkup, political correspondent of The Daily Telegraph. "Since his return from Brussels, the Business Secretary hasn't opened his mouth without committing news in some way or other." Some readers were horrified. "Most of the intelligent amongst us cannot fathom the media attention given to this childish and vitriolic Machiavelli impersonator," said one.

So image conscious is Mandelson that he corrected The Telegraph's diarist Tim Walker, who falsely associated him with a Louis Vuitton bag which he was standing next to in a photograph. As he well understands, modern political journalism is personality-driven and – as pussycat or Machiavelli – he excites the public sufficiently to generate air-time, column inches and page views. That's why PM for PM is such a good story.

Examples of footage watched:

CASE STUDY 3: Andy Coulson

"It's certainly an interesting move by the Tories who have not had much luck trying to find an equivalent to Alastair Campbell, someone who knows the business and can make the media weather," 

White added.

As I first thought, conducting a search on Andy Coulson just comes up with lots of material relating to the hacking scandal which isn't what I was looking for. What I did manage to track down was this short clip from Question Time:

It became clear to me that the role of Director of Communications involves a past of dabbling in Journalism... This is something I will consider in my project.