Timeline de la communication de Clarence Mitchell
0:00 - Introduction by Miranda Ward
4:00 - Clarence Mitchell takes the stage
5:15 - The case of Madeleine McCann: An exceptional story in a multi-platform environment
10:30 - Public perception
11:44 - The big picture: international police, international media, official leaks, the parents, friends, the governments
14:00 - Information leaks: the deal, the damage
15:00 - Blogging – in the wrong hands and with an agenda can do enormous damage
16:00 - Question everything, no matter what, as a journalist would
17:00 - A ‘pool’ is not just something you swim in: sharing information
19:26 - The newsroom and the tidal wave of content
20:55 - Lack of relationships between competing media: 200 to 300 media on-site and more in the UK
22:30 - Going legal: defeating misinformation, lies and gross defamation
23:20 - Keeping the focus on the search not the parents
26:40 - Keeping the British press in line
28:00 - The media pool: A daily soap opera with few checks or balances
29:00 - Journalists pressured to produce stories resulted in false sighting reports
31:00 - Calling on the government for help: Operation Grange, the Scotland Yard inquiry
33:00 - More than 100 articles deemed “grossly defamatory”; the front page apologies, payouts and trust fund
35:00 - Be straight with the media
39:00 - Meeting the Pope
40:00 - Kate McCann’s role for missing children organisations in Britain
42:00 - Media calls for 2017’s 10 year anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance
44:00 - The battle for hope: cases of women being held against their will
45:00 - Miranda Ward takes stage with Clarence for one-on-one Q&A
49:00 - Audience questions
1:02:15 - Presentation concludes
The man who has kept the disappearance of toddler Madeleine McCann in the news for the past nine years said he managed to do so by looking at the case through the eyes of a journalist. Clarence Mitchell: "It became a daily soap opera". Speaking on the challenges of dealing with what became one of the biggest news stories in the world at the time, Clarence Mitchell revealed to the CommsCon Conference in Sydney, it was “the first big missing child case of the internet age”.
Explaining how he handled
the initial issues posed by a press pack of 3-400 international
reporters, former BBC reporter Mitchell explained: “I had to look
at it as a journalist would – pose the questions a journalist would
ask. If you’re half-way to answering those questions you are
half-way to getting good coverage.”
After the four-year-old
was snatched from her hotel room at a Portuguese resort while her
parents dined at a nearby restaurant, Mitchell said it became “like
a daily soap opera” as it was “a story that shocked the world and
continues to shock”, leading the media to bay for more headlines to
feed public interest in the case.
He explained how turf
wars developed between local and international press, and how he had
had reporters in tears begging for extra information otherwise they
‘would be fired’, leading to stories containing “wild
allegations” in the media against parents Kate and Jerry McCann.
Mitchell said the family were initially reluctant to go legal for
fear of getting the press offside, but have ultimately taken action
against several papers in the UK and Portugal, which Mitchell said:
“Did set a marker, we were reluctant to go legal, and the British
media calmed down and they have been a lot more responsible since
then.” Mitchell insists campaign materials are included in every
news story about Madeleine
The family has had more
than 550,000 pounds in damages paid out to the foundation, which
helps to fund the ongoing search for Madeleine. Ultimately Mitchell
said his job was to try and bring reporters back to the central
message – the hunt for Madeleine – and “not the wider family
soap opera which was developing around it”. Asked how he had kept
the story, which has had thousands of front page articles around the
world, in the public attention, he explained: “We were aware early
on there could be a boredom threshold with members of the public –
as awful as that sounds. “News desks did start to say they need
something different, and that’s where the age-progressed images
were important and gave us new hooks to create more interest in it.”
He said he avoided
exclusivity with papers as “that would have backfired
spectacularly” saying they key was to get as much publicity as
possible. “Later on, as the appetite began to wane on a daily basis
we had to be a bit more imaginative”, pointing to a segment on the
second anniversary on the Oprah Winfrey show which showed how they
produce the age-progressed images of Madeleine. He added they also
insist on campaign materials being used in every story about
Madeleine.
“For something that’s
running as an ongoing issue you need everyone on board,” he added.
Explaining how he
approached working with journalists, he explained: “A legitimate
tier-one journalist, if they have a good relationship with you, will
hear you out, it doesn’t mean they will change their story, but
they will give you a fair hearing.” He also explained how “there’s
too little investigative journalism” as “a lot of news desks have
turned into cut-and-paste because of the constant monster of the
internet”.
“If I knew the
journalists and they knew me and I could say here’s the truth of
the situation then they’d give me a fair hearing.” But he warned:
“There’s no such thing as ‘off the record’ any more. If you
don’t want to see it in print and on the air, don’t say it. “I
would ask understanding as to why we couldn’t get into that today,
but it will become clear. Or I’d say ‘if you don’t print that
today, I’m promising you you will have something better on Friday’.
“That worked with media I knew. With the Portuguese media I didn’t
know from Adam I had to be more careful.”
Alex Hayes
Interview de Clarence Mitchell par Alex Hayes
Interview de Clarence Mitchell par Alex Hayes
Former BBC journalist Clarence Mitchell
helped keep the story of the disappearance of three-year-old British
child Madeleine McCann in the media for eight years. In this Q&A
he discusses the challenges of the case, his career as a journalist
and the road to launching his own communications consultancy,
Clarence Mitchell Communications.
AH : What was the most challenging part of
being the spokesman for the McCann family?
CM : There were constant daily challenges.
Hourly, in fact. And at times 24/7 – for the first couple of years.
Not least having to correct, rebut or balance very rapidly the
initial hostile coverage that the family faced, particularly in
Portuguese media.
False stories based on anonymous
briefings on one day were then simply repeated internationally the
next day before being re-repeated in Portugal on the third day.
UK journalists, especially, were under
immense newsdesk pressure to deliver a sensational splash
irrespective of the day’s actual events or the truth of something,
which meant much of my time was spent dampening down – or stopping
altogether – the most lurid, exaggerated or blatantly fabricated
headlines.
Hostile UK coverage of the Portuguese
police also meant the situation quickly became very nationalistic and
highly political, too. Cultural differences added to the mix.
Being an advocate for the family and
their friends, defending their reputation and actions and constantly
attempting to pull what felt like a daily soap opera back to
concentrating purely on the search for Madeleine was the main overall
challenge.
AH : How do you go
about engaging with media on such a sensitive story as Madeleine
McCann’s disappearance?
CM : Whilst it has been and continues to be
a highly emotionally-charged situation, I could not, and cannot,
afford to be emotional with the media in any way. Tact, sensitivity,
understanding and diplomacy were needed from the outset. Not least
given the international and cultural differences so publicly at play,
quite apart from the core human story of Madeleine’s disappearance
itself.
I approached it as a major news story
as a news reporter would, with all the dispassionate journalistic
demands for immediate information, access and briefings that go with
one.
As a former journalist myself it also
helped considerably that I knew what journalists, both print and
broadcast, would largely want, how they would approach it and when
were their individual pressure points, according to their respective
deadline rhythms.
It meant I could predict with some
certainty what elements of the story they would focus on, how it
would play out over any given 24 hour news cycle and, if feasible and
practical with law enforcement on the ground, how I could create
opportunities for them, while liaising closely with the family at all
times. I then prioritised which outlets would get what and when, if
at all.
Part of it was also daily
relationship-building on the ground and developing trust to overcome
the language difficulties and improve international media
co-operation. Getting local media to share pooled picture and
interview opportunities, for example, was a particular hurdle until
they understood they could trust me to deliver for them.
AH : What are the key PR skills needed when
handling a case such as the disappearance of Madeleine McCann?
CM : It needed a mixture of skills:
sheer common sense, honesty, rapidity of response, having a clear
line to take ready and dealing with the journalists in as
straightforward and open a way as possible, given the constraints of
the police operation.
If a journalist was straight with me in
their approach and demands, I was straight with them in what I could
or could not tell or offer them, which on many days wasn’t much.
In terms of assisting the family
themselves, it also required tact and sensitivity and an
understanding of their own antipathy towards certain media requests,
discussing with them in detail the merits of certain bids and how
they may or may not help the wider search.
I effectively acted as the middleman
trying daily to balance the family’s privacy and law enforcement’s
operational restrictions on public statements or picture
opportunities with the media’s constant desire and demand for
updated information and their central, over-riding desire to help the
search.
At certain times coverage could be
highly counter-productive and it was hard for journalists to accept
that.
I also took a hard-nosed attitude to
any journalistic nonsense, blatant exaggeration or swallowing of
downright lies. Later, I acted as liaison with the family’s
defamation lawyers and senior editorial figures in the UK, which
required tact and diplomacy whilst also making robustly clear the
failures of their own internal editorial systems.
AH : What are the lessons you’ve taken
away from handling the McCann case that you can apply to your other
clients, especially now you’ve started your own firm?
CM : To be as human, empathetic and
sensitive as possible, whilst still being firm, brutally honest and
fair in dealing with both your clients and the media.
Common sense, transparency and an
ability not to be afraid to say it how it is still takes you a long
way in PR, not the latest comms jargon or buzzword.
The industry, at heart, is still driven
by relationships and the mutual trust that develops as your advocacy
grows for a client or your sell-in delivers for a journalist. Nurture
those core characteristics in all your client and media relationships
and they will underpin your success, bolstering everything you do.
AH : How does working as a
journalist for the BBC differ to working in public relations?
CM : There were both similarities and key
differences. At the BBC, I spent 20 years dealing with hard facts
rather than opinion, researching stories extensively and establishing
the accuracy of a situation – the exact same attributes needed in
PR when understanding a client, their background or product and the
facts of their situation. That core journalistic discipline has stood
me in very good stead ever since.
The differences, though, lie in my
originally not being able to express any view as a news reporter.
In PR, particularly within reputation
management, I had to rapidly become an advocate, taking a position
and arguing it strongly on behalf of the client, almost, in fact, a
political role. That was a big adjustment to make from simply being
the impartial BBC observer and messenger.
AH :How did your experience leading the
British government’s media monitoring unit prepare you for working
in PR?
CM : It gave me a crucial insight into the
workings of central government structures at the highest level, along
with an understanding of the civil service culture and attitudes –
all vital for effective public affairs outreach in my later PR life.
It also gave me strong political
insight. Although I, of course, operated with strict neutrality under
the Civil Service Code of propriety, working for Ministers of the
day, no matter which Party was in power.
Running a mid-sized team of Information
Officers across a 24/7 rota was also good management experience for
my later chairing of public affairs and media practice areas in a
network agency.
In many respects, the UK civil service
was the ideal bridging element in my career to make the transition
from journalism to PR.
AH : What are the challenges in starting
your own PR business?
CM : Establishing, expanding and
diversifying my core client list as swiftly as possible. I have been
fortunate enough so far to have built a public profile that has
brought me a valued client base, stretching across the personal,
corporate and political spheres.
My central challenge
now is to consolidate CMC Ltd to become a significant industry
presence, whilst building out new relationships and client offers
across potential new sectors, for example, in entertainment and
sport.
AH : In terms of the PR industry what do you
see as the key challenges for the year ahead?
CM : The industry still needs to build a far
broader C-suite acceptance of the PR and comms function as an
integral part of the core management and marketing portfolio. For too
many companies PR remains a bolt-on, regarded as expensive, only
really visible and valued when a crisis hits.
The key industry challenge remains the
need for PR to prove its worth daily within the boardroom, not simply
as a generator of publicity or some sort of press office add-on, but
as the ever watchful. multi-channel promoter and guardian of
reputation, brand and share price.
In the sprawling digital age, clients –
corporate, political and personal – still need to understand that
while the day of controlling the message is largely over, replaced by
the day of influencing it, the attendant multi–platform
opportunities to do so have never been greater.
Logistically, staff retention, low pay
for interns and an uncertain global economic climate continuing the
downward pressure on budget spend will also all continue to present
central industry challenges in the coming year.
