Stick It In The Inside Pages & Hope Nobody Notices

The relatively muted treatment of yesterday's PR stunt at the waterfront in Trinity Mirror's organs indicates that both the Post & Echo editors know that it was quickly seen for what it was. Richard Down's piece in the Daily Post was reheated & served up again by the Oldham Echo (http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2009/08/20/hundreds-hug-grosvenor-s-underfire-flagship-liverpool-apartment-block-one-park-west-92534-24486842/ ).
Even by Oldham Hall Street's standards, it is a pretty sloppy & slapdash piece of scribbling:
"More than 100 people held an architectural love in for an under-fire apartment block in Liverpool city centre.
"The residents and shoppers linked hands in defence of Grosvenor's flagship apartment block One Park West at midday yesterday."
[Note: the photograph above was taken at five minutes past midday.]
Down's third-rate copy plumbs the depths further on:
"Yesterday marked the climax of the online action with a real-life 'group hug' at 12.30pm.
"Famous Twitter users Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry were invited to join and at one point organisers thought Liverpool FC defender Jamie Carragher would show up.
"In the end, no celebrities made it, but a chain of around 200 people linked hands, turned their backs on the 17-storey building and embraced it."
Hacks prostituting their profession is as old as journalism itself; this, erm, article is the latest in a long, long line. Let's just break it down (no pun intended), shall we?
So the "group hug" was "real-life", was it? I didn't know that, I was under the delusion it was all a mirage.
The notion that Ross & Fry would have even given this PR stunt a second thought is risible in the extreme; the organisers, moreover, show that their relation to reality is tenuous if they really thought that Jamie Carragher would show up just hours before a Premier League game at Anfield [good win, btw].
There weren't "around 200" participants for the cameras. Halve that number & you're still debating the actual turnout. And can someone please explain how you can turn your back on something, or someone, in order to embrace the object of one's apparent adoration?
Journalism at its finest, wouldn't you say?