Cicero and the limits to spin and rhetoric
One would think that because everybody can speak, everybody could master rhetoric and the refined arts of influencing others (read public relations). But that’s not quite how it is. Cicero’s great work...
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VW: a panto of green politics
First published on spiked, September 2015 Irrational regulation and green posturing are the real causes of the Volkswagen debacle by Paul Seaman and James Woudhuysen Last week, it was revealed that...
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Muse on the anatomy of rhetoric
The other day I came across an article that I wrote many moons ago. I am now pleased to be publishing a lightly edited version of that original anatomy of rhetoric, which I thought I’d lost forever....
View ArticleA brave new world for mass communication
The success of both BREXIT and Trump tells us that the world is changing. Their triumphs mark a transformation of the public’s mood, which is causing the rules governing media schmoozing and managing...
View ArticleBell Pottinger South Africa, a reality check
What unites all the major political parties in South Africa: the African National Congress (ANC), the Democratic Alliance (DA), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Economic Freedom...
View ArticleThe Culture Wars: a PR perspective
Societies in the 21st century are increasingly defined by rapidly fragmenting socio-cultural outlooks and competing ways of life. Personhood has been politicised and commodified: we have identity...
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PR manifesto for combatting the Culture Wars
21st Century PR Issues maintains that within PR circles there is a near-universal conformity governing the industry’s self-destructive, poorly thought-through response to the Culture Wars. In short:...
View ArticleGerman media scores own goal in the Culture Wars
A just published report from the Hamburg Media School, commissioned by the Otter Brenner Stiftung, accuses the German media of succumbing to steamroller journalism in support of Angela Merkel’s refugee...
View ArticleOpinion piece on the demise of Bell Pottinger
As Bell Pottinger prepares to put itself into administration following its expulsion from the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA), here’s an opinion piece, which calls out the PRCA’s...
View ArticleMedia’s lost art of public debate keeps Trump in power
In his just published book – Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War over the Truth – Howard Kurtz, a former Washington Post columnist, explores how the media became the ‘opposition party’...
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