Well, Nick Davies and I lost the vote at the debate last night (see posting immediately below this) on the motion: "The growth of PR is threatening the integrity of the press." I have to say I expected that the audience would be composed largely of journalists, or would-be journalists, and that victory was guaranteed.
In fact, as our opponents were gracious enough to concede, the hall at the University of Westminster, was packed with PR people. Result: 59 for the motion and a whopping 164 against. Broad smiles for Lord Tim Bell and Phil Hall.
But it's also fair to say that the hole in our argument was exposed by Bell's initial contribution, when he questioned whether the press has ever had any integrity anyway. In a sense, both Davies and I found it difficult to combat that point, despite our passionate conviction that there is no moral equivalence between journalism and PR.
A couple of academics who I might have expected to vote for the motion eventually voted against. They made it clear that, in their view, the central problem of the press lies within the press itself. PR might be a contributory factor but it is not the major reason that people - the public, the readers, the growing band of non-readers - distrust what they read in newspapers.
It was a salutary lesson.
