Recent reports about the manipulation of Wikipedia entries by a well-renowned public relations entity caused shock and outrage from media commentators and industry peers alike. Initially I felt quite shocked too, although when I stopped to think about it, I realised that I wasn’t that surprised after all. Especially if the PR company concerned was able to claim that it was tidying up the information rather than misleading anyone.
Anyone is free to add information to Wikipedia, although the site’s own guidance urges people to avoid topics in which they have a personal or business interest. Therefore, this is likely to have been a breach of those guidelines. So far, so bad.
But in this day and age aren’t we all used to the digital manipulation of everything we read, see or hear anyway? Many people I know manipulate their images on social media sites – usually to make themselves look better, or sometimes for comic or ‘mysterious’ effect. We all know that models don’t really look like the airbrushed images on magazine covers and advertising hoardings that we see, and that estate agents’ depiction of properties they are selling often uses wide-angled or ‘clever’ photography techniques, such as leaving every single light on in the house in broad daylight.
Manipulation doesn’t even have to be digital!
Back in the day, very very pre-digital, when I started out in beauty PR, it was an open secret that you could ‘buy’ a magazine cover and claim that the make-up used on it was a client’s; likewise hosiery/hair products – anything that could be ‘matched-up’. This open secret was eventually exposed and the practice quite rightly cleaned up.
I’m not saying that manipulating information or images is right – usually it is quite wrong. However, I do think that the general public does have a healthy ‘bullsh*t detector’ mentality – which probably allows for a ten – 20 per cent reduction in ‘sizzle’ for all that we read, hear and see.
From the reports and CVs we read at work to the latest government announcement; even the news media often has its own agenda. We all know to take all the various information we ingest with a ‘pinch of salt’. Don’t we?
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