Okay, maybe he’s not big and fat. Nocera, the curmudgeonly New York Times business columnist who has a long history of flagrant animosity toward PR people has had a flare-up.  Apparently, he had nothing of substance to blog about so he holds up a PR pitch for ridicule. That’s an old trick that is supposed to showcase Nocera’s superiority and publicly flog a poor PR person while condemning the entire industry.

OK, the pitch is inane and Nocera is not a journalist you pitch about children as the new accessories or anything to do with “Brangelina.” Nocera is a serious guy who likes to hobnob with the titans of industry while maintaining the cloak of the ‘serious journalist.’

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That’s the message you’re supposed to get from the cover of the New Yorker that has the Obama campaign PR machine in a tizzy over how to react. I am a New Yorker, not necessarily a New Yorker reader. To me, the cover is obviously satirical and not much more radical than some previous New Yorker covers, so what’s the big deal?

The purpose of a provocative magazine cover, of course, is to generate buzz and sell magazines. Judged by that criteria, this is highly successful commercial art. Both Obama and McCain can write this off as further proof that the east coast effete intellectual media is out of touch with the rest of the “normal” people out there who find this grossly offensive. I am rarely offended by free speech and artistic expression, and I am always amused by how the “rest of the country” can both admire and revile, and attempt to dismiss us here in the naked city.

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What is Ronn Torossian thinking?

Torossian, CEO of 5W PR, really stepped in it this week and hubris and deflection will not save him.  He needs to fire Juda Engelmayer and accept full responsibility for the latest ethical lapse at his company or suffer serious credibility damage.

The thumbnail of this outrageous story: Engelmayer impersonated a prominent Rabbi and fabicated other characters who posted laudatory comments about a 5W client and mimicked critics in blogs and chats. Shmarya Rosenberg of FailedMessiah.com did some sharp investigating and found that the posts were coming from Engelmayer.

At first, Torossian countered with his usual bluster: “I have complete confidence in knowing that my account team who runs these accounts did not make these posts.�

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Andrew Cohen issued an “opinion” on CBS News June 1 that is still reverberating around the PR world. Cohen is a “legal analyst” who obviously had a bad experience with a PR person who probably couldn’t stand his sanctimony and ignorance and tried to warn him about his public perception. According to Cohen the entire PR profession is a sham and everyone in it is a liar, end of story, so why are we surprised by Scott McClellan’s late-stage confession of PR misdeeds?

As a counterpoint I was going to list all the journalists who have been caught fabricating sources and entire stories for USA Today, The New York Times, his employer, CBS, and countless other media outlets, but Cohen is not a journalist, he’s an “analyst” and cannot be held to any journalistic standards.

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When Fox News is the Story, David Carr’s groundbreaking story in the The New York Times yesterday, is part confession, part reportage, advocacy and above all, deeply personal. It is a great piece of news reporting that could only be personal – the attacks of the Fox News PR bloodhounds are personal, vicious, unrelenting and remorseless.

There’s nothing wrong with aggressive PR, with protecting your own and fighting to get your point of view included. Fox PR crosses the line, any line you want to imagine, when it uses its news and commentary shows to eviscerate its enemies – anybody who does not agree with them. Their doctoring of “enemy” journalist photos for public stonings is not only horribly nasty, it’s bizarre, arguably anti-semetic, and proves that Fox news product is driven by Roger Ailes’ right-wing media/politico PR complex.

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