It’s time for journalists to be honest about their corrupting involvement with PR

I was due this week to interview a person I much admire, for a publication I respect, and for a fee I could more or less live with. My putative interviewee was my undoubted superior in terms both of intellect and genius: someone who has for many years managed a career with skill and flair. The parameters of the interview were benign: given the surrounding circumstances and the nature of the publication there could be no question of my wanting to embarrass or trap my interviewee. In short, this was to be a friendly interview with a capable adult conducted for the mutual advantage of both parties and (in this case) the public good. There were no imaginable elephant traps for anyone involved.

A day before our rendezvous I received an email from the people setting it up informing me — just so I knew — that my interviewee’s PR would be sitting in on the discussion, ‘at [her client’s] request’.