Comment: On PR stunts or how (not) to spread lies in press releases

I have often seen PR creativity at work, most of the time I appreciated it, in some cases not that much, but I could live with it. But the recent so called PR stunt by a communication agency and their Romanian client, photo equipment retailer F64 didn't really go down easy for me. I felt they took the entire Romanian press for fools, and I never in my life have heard of anything quite like this. While I agree that simply re-writing press releases is not the highest form of journalism, it is a legitimate form, often used, and it is based on a convention: everything we receive officially from a company, either directly, or through a PR company, we believe that to be true. So when all the Romanian media wrote last Friday that the retailer F64, a large retailer, with a EUR 18 million turnover, was sold to a foreign investor (plausible information, presented in a very serious and official form), all the journalists believed that info to be true. They had received it officially via the PR agency working with the retailer. Three days later, surprise, surprise! The press release also included an invitation to a press conference to take place the following Monday (December 15), when journalists were promised to be revealed the identity of the investor. Luckily this time, as I was busy, I could not attend the press conference on Monday morning, and was saved the direct shock of the PR stunt that was pulled on journalists. The announced investor was in fact Santa Claus, marking the beginning of the festive season, bla bla. Upon receiving the release describing the Monday event, as it was far beyond my imagination, I called my PR contact with the agency to confirm the information, and to my amazement, she explained how funny it was at the event, gifts were given. Yes, gifts, and a slap in the face to the entire Romanian media, I might add. Some journalists presented the whole thing as the hoax of the year in IT, others just crunched the other numbers presented during the conference to publish a decent piece of news, while others underlined the uninspired move. They call it a PR stunt, but I see it as spreading false information, pure and simple. What if all PR agencies start doing the same? Even if I leave that aside, it was still a very uninspired decision by the PR company and by the client, on the more practical side. It was Monday morning, a busy hour for journalists, who went to a media event with the hope they would write a front page news, only to be faced with a Christmasy event. Imagine the future of the relationship between the agency, client, and the journalists! I'm almost positive the agency will lose the client too. In the end, I think the event itself is still newsworthy, as it shows a sad facet of the media reality. We're understaffed so we have to crunch press releases, and they think it's all right to manipulate the media by providing it with untrue information. I think this kind of PR stunt should be taught in public relations schools, in the 'what to avoid' column. UPDATE: Two days after we published this text, like many others out there, I received an official email from the PR agency - which I choose not to name throughout this text - , in which they apologized to all people in media and PR. They took responsibility for failing to fully do their counseling job and reminded that the press release is their main communication tool to the media, and that its integrity needs to stay spotless. This does not undo it all, but it is a step in the right direction, which I was hoping they'd do.