The weekend’s media was full of footage of Boris Johnson serving a tray of tea to the journalists waiting vainly for a comment at the end of his driveway. As the row over his comments on the burqa continues to escalate the UK’s media outlets were seeking reaction from the former Foreign Secretary but were offered nothing more for their troubles than a few cups of stewed, tepid tea.
Ferrying a tray of refreshments to the pack of hacks hovering on the boundary of your property has become a device that those enjoying some high-profile media heat can reach for from the PR toolbox every now and again. It’s usually only employed in the midst of big or long-running stories, those weighty enough to warrant a phalanx of reporters waiting at the gate of the besieged protagonist as they jostle and harry for some news scraps to be chucked their way.
The intention of the person at the centre of the storm is to sidestep the story but still make some sort of connection with the media, and by extension, the outside world. It’s a neutral olive branch offered outside of the entrenched argument which, of course, if they’re lucky might shift public opinion a little in their favour and create a nice photo opportunity for themselves while they’re at it.
Jonathan Ross did it when he decided not to renegotiate his contract with the BBC after the Andrew Sachs phone call furore. Gianfranco Zola did it when he was sacked as manager of West Ham. Even the usually PR-savvy President Obama did it when the White House communications team made some disparaging remarks about the Washington political press corps, delivering them not only coffee, but doughnuts too – truly next level stuff.
It’s far from a sophisticated and slick media rebuttal but is seen as something that can’t really do the focus of the story any further harm. You’re giving the journalists something, even if it’s not really what they want, and at least trying to show them and their audience that you’re human after all. But when does reaching for this well-worn tool from the PR toolbox become throwing a spanner in the works?
Well, that sort of depends on the media story. A presenter leaving a TV channel or a Premier League manager getting sacked by his football club are hardly matters of state. But, as in Boris Johnson’s case, when you’ve made controversial remarks about religion in an already febrile political environment proffering a cup of warm tea in a Mini Eggs mug is possibly not an appropriate way to respond. Look at the Obama example again. When he used the same trick it was over some frustrated and unguarded White House remarks about the media themselves. It was basically an apology and an attempt at, quite literally, with doughnuts, sweetening the journalists up. It certainly wasn’t employed to defuse an issue of religious tension.
The footage of Johnson being filmed sparring light-heartedly with the reporters made him look not just unstatesmanlike but once again like someone with a dangerously or disingenuously blithe approach to media handling. The political consideration over whether what he said was morally right or wrong is one thing, but the inability to realise that, either way, this isn’t a moment for levity is entirely another. Ignoring the anger – whether you feel this anger is justified or not – of a significant proportion of the citizens of a country of which you were Foreign Secretary a few weeks ago by joking around with reporters is not a tricksy way to play the media. From a PR perspective, it is worse than saying and doing nothing at all.
Richard Ellis Communications 