ARmy Rumour SErvice

Wow - Guido is becoming ever more innacurate - although to be fair, he does seem to like being the story rather than breaking the story these days.

The harsh reality is that there is a small cadre of military (and I stress military) corporate comms types in Main Building who do everything from speaking to the press through to coming up with gizzits to hand out to people. They generally speaking do one tour then bugger off on promotion, which may explain why so much PR is 'less than optimal'. There is also a small central press office, who do all the defence news stuff ranging from the website through to press releases.

Whether we like it or not, an organisation which collectively employs roughly a quarter of a million people, spending £36 billion of public money a year, and which does a lot of things ranging from the extremely cool to the terrifyingly controversial is going to attract public interest and media attention.

Now we have two choices - we can go for option a, which involves sticking our head in the sand, singing 'lalalalala we cant hear you' and not engaging with the media at all. This is not particularly sensible, nor is it an option favoured by politicians of any persuasion, who naturally want to sing about what MOD is doing, because usually committing HM Forces is a career enhancing means of winning an election...

Alternatively we could go for option b, which is to employ a small cadre of people, to handle all this stuff and ensure that when HM Forces hit the news, that there is a reasonably cogent argument to put forward, that we dont end up being ambushed by journalists intending to make us look stupid, and that the MOD side of the debate is listened to. At the same time they can do all the engagement needed to keep on generating goodwill, public support, recruits and so on.

Part of Option b means that we need people to do press stuff - this is where this supposed 600 press officers comes from. Dig a little deeper and you'll find it really means that there are 600 people across the whole of MOD&HM Forces who have, as part of their wider duties, a PR role. This can range from doing a once a year press release, through to doing a bit more when time permits. This work usually does all the local fillers, which help keep the local newspapers sweet, and also updates unit websites and so on. We may be cynical about it, but don't underestimate the genuine desire by the public to learn more about what we do, and what we're up to.

Part of the advantages of the information age is that its much easier to broadcast internationally from a local vicinity. We're now much more easily able to get messages out using more means than before - but this does mean that where previously PRO was a job given more to make an OJAR look vaguely impressive, now the means exist to do something about it. Thats why we focus so much more on it now than before.

Do we get it right? My own view is that MOD PR is a hell of a lot better now than it used to be. Having got to know a few of them, and worked with them on a few things, I am very sympathetic to their position. They are to a man, genuinely passionate about selling what defence does, and why it matters, and why it is important to the taxpayer. They are dealing with a wide range of people from the keen friendly and just grateful to get column inches local newspaper, all the way through to the seasoned reptiles from the press pool who will quite happily shaft us in order to get the headline they all crave (seriously, speak to any journalist and the one thing they crave is that elusive front page headline and they will happily shaft you and their firstborn to get it).

Its not an easy job, its not one I'm sure I could do, but its one that if we didnt have, I think the whole coverage of defence, popular support for what we do, and the associated positive benefits would be far more lacking.

^ What he said, to the power of eleventy billion.

Jim

Well said. I have a question. Do you know if the "Counsellors" MoD employs in Washington DC are part of this PR cadre? One of them is a 2 Star civvy whose cv on linked-in is the fluffiest sh!t I've ever seen. What on earth does a "Counsellor" do? Hold hands with his US equivalent?

Originally Posted by bakersfield

Jim

Well said. I have a question. Do you know if the "Counsellors" MoD employs in Washington DC are part of this PR cadre? One of them is a 2 Star civvy whose cv on linked-in is the fluffiest sh!t I've ever seen. What on earth does a "Counsellor" do? Hold hands with his US equivalent?

No they are not PR gurus, although the guys I knew previously in those roles were pretty media-savvy. One deals almost exclusively with the defence technology cooperation and FMS liaison with the State Department. Certainly good eggs in my time, earning a little more than a Major...

most PRO are a waste of space, the DMC is populated by people thinking they are in the meedya, when compared to other comparable organisations ie shell, ICI, BP they are strictly amateur. There is a lot of nepotism and empire building going on in that building. Mostly civil serpents they cannot be sacked, there are one or two poachers turned gamekeepers that are in the system these are pretty good operators. There are senior officers in the system that are not media orientated and only have a short course under there belt who muddle through.

The whole system requires ripping out, and replaced with journalists, editors that are young, hungry and have a proven track record in the business.

The current model is wrong, and has been for a long time, and get rid of the empire builders. Replace it with a MoD media corp that thinks and acts exactly like the contemporary organisations it has been sadly trying to emulate. Media is often seen as a non skill set career that you can join and fudge your way through.

Media is often seen as a non skill set career that you can join and fudge your way through.

We had someone like that on here, not so long ago....

Originally Posted by Davetheclown

Media is often seen as a non skill set career that you can join and fudge your way through.

So much like procurement then?

A little more;

Hammond Surfaces.

which links to;

Think Defence(Oh look, there's Jim30)


Winning post by Brian Black(near bottom)

I guess it’s all about the job descriptions, and whether these are full time tasks or additional duties.
Until we have those details it’s impossible to say whether these numbers are excessive or not.
I’m not sure how you would go about getting that information… if only there was some kind of external communications officer at the MoD that you could ask.