On the agenda

Suspicion is an important trait for journalists.
It is always vital to remember that for most people who are speaking to you voluntarily there is normally an angle from which they will be benefiting.
This may be the unemployed mother-of-three who is telling you about the terrible conditions of her council house because secretly she just wants to be moved away from her neighbour, or the local councillor who tips you off about a problem in the borough because it reflects badly on the opposition party.
With both these cases it is possible to see and understand the complainants motivation, yet still make an interesting yet balanced story by exploring both sides.
The most obvious people with agendas are press officers. Quite simply, they are paid to promote good news and limit the damage on bad.
There is an almost spiteful prejudice towards PR in journalism and, whatever seasoned hacks may say, a lot of it is born out of snobbery.
I have not known the supposed "halcyon days" of journalism which the portly red-faced survivors of Fleet Street harp on about at any given opportunity. In these days supposedly no organisations had press officers, you could spend four hours at lunch time in the pub with the head of the Met Police DCI Gene Hunt and pigs flew in the window and dropped stories on your desk as you sat in an alcoholic stupor waiting for the internet to be invented.
Since I started my career everyone from the Mayor of London to the local birdspotting club has had someone who handles their press. As a journalist it can at times be very frustrating to have access to organisations restricted to a small team of employees and there is nothing more infuriating than turning up at the scene of a police incident only to be told by PCs on the cordon that you will have to contact the press office to find out what is going on. But what journalists so often fail to realise is how intimidating it can be to be approached and quizzed on a subject by someone who is recording all your words and will probably reproduce them to be read by thousands of others.
Even writing this blog I have time to pick my words carefully, edit and reedit it and I know it will not be spun out of context, because I'm the one publishing it. If someone rang me up and asked me to give my opinion out of the blue and they would write it all down I'm sure this would just be an incoherent mass of drivel (even more so than it is now), which would invariably include something which would get me fired.
Press officers are there to make sure your average worker doesn't have to deal with the unfamiliar world of journalism and a good one can often be more of a help than a hindrance.
But before I get a host of mocking emails from my colleagues claiming I have 'gone to the dark side' I will end this entry with my top five things a bad press officer can do which make me so angry I want to swear in front of nuns:

5) Send out press releases without a single word of real English, filled to the brim with meaningless phrases like "transgenerational partnership".
4) Ask me when my deadline is then completely fail to get any kind of response in time and not even have the courtesy to phone.
3) Provide a quote but refuse to attribute it to anyone except a faceless spokesperson - if 99-year-old Mrs Biddleswaite has had the courage to give us her name when complaining about the poor service she received in a supermarket then the international chain which runs said store could have the decency to scrape up a real employee to apologise on its behalf.
2) Ring me up with a story that has no relevance at all to the area we cover then reveal they are clearly completely ignorant of what kind of publication we are.
1) And worst of all crimes - try to tell me that something I'm enquiring about "really isn't a story" and maybe I should just drop it. When you run the paper you can decide what stories are done and which ones aren't, until then just answer my question like you're paid to. Grrrr... I hope I don't pass any nunneries on the way home.