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Thomas Cook should have asked a journalist what to do says training boss

Paul WiltshireA regional journalism trainer has told travel company Thomas Cook it should have asked a journalist for advice about how to handle the deaths of two British children while on holiday in 2006.

Last week, an inquest jury ruled Christi and Bobby Shepherd were unlawfully killed and said Thomas Cook has “breached its duty of care.”

The travel company only issued a belated apology last weekend and has seen bookings slump since the inquest verdict.

Paul Wiltshire, regional editorial trainer for Local World, described the company’s PR strategy as “disastrous” and said most journalists would have had a better “feel” for how to respond.

Writing on his blog, Paul compared the situation to an ethics question posed on a past NCTJ exam paper, in which candidates are asked to decide what they would do if the boss of an airport which paid for a press trip tried to call in the alleged favour when an embarrassing story emerges about his company.

In describing his model answer, Paul questioned what industry publications including HoldtheFrontPage would make of such a story.

He wrote: “It’s a litmus test that I’ve used a few times over the years when wrestling with ethical dilemmas and conflicts of interest, teamed with a simpler one: What feels right here?

“And it is these sort of questions that must be at the heart of any decent – in every sense of the word – PR strategy.”

Using the analogy in relation to the Thomas Cook issue, he pondered what the Daily Mail, The Guardian or The Sun would also make of such a story.

He added: “There seems to be a genuine consensus that the disastrous strategy pursued by Thomas Cook until the weekend must have been driven by legal advice, rather than emotional intelligence or even common sense. It was media exposure that forced a shortsighted company to belatedly see the bigger picture.

“Two points occur to me. One is that the lesson Thomas Cook has learned – that the morally right thing and the legally right thing aren’t always the same – is one which we in the media also need to remember at times.

“But the main thought is that often journalists who have analysed a situation for just a few minutes – significantly, the same period as the average customer – will have a better feel for the right thing to do than all the highly-paid executives in the land.”

5 comments

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  • May 22, 2015 at 9:40 am
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    I’m an ex-journo, now in PR.

    As soon as I saw the story, I thought exactly the same.

    A bad reputation will destroy a company much faster than a large legal bill.

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  • May 22, 2015 at 4:28 pm
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    The Thoams Cook case ranks alongside that of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as an example of how not to do PR.

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  • May 26, 2015 at 12:58 pm
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    As a semi-retired jour no and ex chief press officer for a national org I groaned when I saw/heard what a debacle the Thomas Cook affair became. They shd have apologised straightaway for the way they handled the issue and been upfront with the media.

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  • May 26, 2015 at 10:17 pm
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    The man who gave his name to the company must be spinning in his grave over his successors’ ineptitude. This company was supposedly founded on Christian values – evidently a very short-lived ideology.

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