It is a prudent part of managing a large company anywhere in the world to employ specialists in public relations and communications. Such people will have the background to speak to the press and write all the documents needed to maintain a good impression with the watching press and the general public. At an annual general meeting, a CEO will no doubt call on his/her publicity experts to help the framing of the address so that the strengths of the company are well presented and then reported in the press the following day.
The work of public relations specialists is no doubt a key component of corporate business life everywhere. We know that the good reputation of a company really matters. In the case of a company with a quotation on the stock exchange, good publicity will boost the price, while stories of mistakes or bad behaviour will do the opposite. Even those of us who do not hold shares are indirectly caught up in this market. Whether or not companies flourish is of importance to the whole of society. The pensions of millions depend on decent valuations of quoted companies. Consequently, it matters to all of us that the companies are run efficiently and ethically. Only on Monday we heard about a report concerning the departure of the CEO of Barclays, Jes Staley. He had been linked to the notorious Jeffrey Epstein and this resulted in a fall in the value of Barclays shares.
The Church of England, like other large organisations, employs specialists in public relations as well as communications experts. They will maintain websites and make sure that the press has a place to go to to find out information and understanding of new initiatives taken by the national Church. Each individual diocese will also maintain their own departments for this kind of work locally. These of course will vary in size according to the relative size and wealth of the diocese. In recent years, we would expect that these communication departments will have grown. The exponential rise in information with the arrival of the internet has had the effect of creating a need for more communication specialists. Experts are also needed to monitor the way that that information about the Church, good and bad, is being shared with the public. I entertain the fantasy that even something as ordinary as this blog is being monitored by someone working for the national Church. Someone needs to make sure that the opinions of ordinary people are somewhere recorded and filed away in a database.
Ii is instructive to watch the way that public companies react when some major crisis arises over their governance or performance. At the start of a crisis, the publicity machine sends out a reassuring message that everything is under control and that the Board, or whoever is in charge, has contingency plans to get through the crisis. Then, at some point in the middle of any crisis, we see a different tone being injected into the communication bulletins that emerge from the company. It is at this point that we may detect that the task of communication has been handed over to external specialists – the crisis/scandal management team. These are the bought-in specialists who offer their services to companies in crisis. They do the difficult task of selling a failing or possibly dishonest company to a public whose trust in the company is under severe strain.
Until I started writing this blog, I had never heard of the expression crisis or scandal management. I had no knowledge that it was possible to employ people to defend an organisation when it was up against the wall in terms of its reputation and integrity. It does of course make some sense for such people to exist, as they make attempts to preserve a company from collapse and bankruptcy. No doubt, in the task of defending the collapsing company, they may have been obliged to exaggerate or bend the truth to accommodate the needs of the moment. But perhaps that is all par for the course. Lies or, at any rate, half-truths are to be expected when so much is at stake. If the institution does finally collapse, the bent truths that may have been told in its defence somehow get forgotten. The world moves on and there is a corporate shrug of the shoulders with the realisation that some people will do anything and use deceit to preserve assets and wealth.
Having been ignorant of the existence of reputation/crisis management, I was quite surprised to discover that it is not just companies that use such specialists but also the church. The challenge to the institution caused by numerous safeguarding failures has meant that parts of the church have been obliged to retain the service of not just their own public relations departments but also these external crisis specialists. There is one particular firm favoured by the Church of England for reputation management, Luther Pendragon (LP). This firm has been retained at considerable expense by the dioceses of London and Winchester, among others. I make no judgement as to the nature or quality of its services. Rather I have to question why any English diocese should ever need to go to specialists beyond their own publicity departments. The use of crisis/scandal management firms seems to be an ominous decision for any church or diocese to follow.
There is an interesting and revealing section of Graystone’s book, Bleeding for Jesus, when he describes the meeting he had with the Titus trustees. They were having to face the revelation of extensive evidence of Smyth’s malfeasance, and they wanted Graystone to help them manage it. Graystone recommended that they make a clean admission of the material they had and appoint someone to investigate Smyth and how the situation had arisen. The trustees ignored his advice and opted for the path of secrecy with the hope that the scandal would remain hidden. Of course, it did not and the damage to the Iwerne brand and the supporting organisations has been enormous. Truth is one thing that refuses to be buried for ever.
The use of public relations skills is probably always a legitimate path for an organisation to follow. Introducing this further expertise of reputation/crisis management advice from outside does, however, raises alarm bells. The innocent outsider will immediately ask the question: what have they got to hide? When secrets become endemic in any organisation, the spiritual and psychological health begins to decline. We learn that LP’s expertise has been valued by English dioceses such as Winchester, London, Oxford as well as Christ Church College and the central C of E. The question that we need to ask each of them is, what have you got to hide that you need such specialist help? There is enough in the public domain to suggest that the workload for LP in responding to each of these clients has been extensive. This has ensured a considerable flow of funds from the offerings of the church faithful to the highly paid consultancy directors.
The world of public companies is such that we can understand any desperate publicity attempts to stop them collapsing with all the damage that will result to wealth and well-being. The Church, perhaps, should be a world apart from the corporate commercial world. We would like to believe that the Church in every manifestation will be a place of integrity, honesty and openness to truth. Why would the Church ever need the services of crisis management specialists? If we learn that such specialists are being used to manage reputations and crises, that will send a corporate shudder through the whole church. The ordinary member will rightly question what else is going on when the Church believes it important to pay people to promote secrecy and suppress information. They will again keep asking the question, what have they got to hide? When trust starts to go, then so much else disappears.
Crises will happen to any organisation. When they happen, then, as Graystone advised Titus, the best approach is to make a clean breast. People generally accept the existence of scandal in an organisation as long as they feel they are not being lied to at the same time. In the recent eruption of safeguarding scandals, people have found that they have been lied to by authority figures in the Church who might have known better. Few people now trust the Church to manage safeguarding, but the Church still clings to its power in this as though it can manage it inhouse. The tales of incompetence increase, and the bonds of trust decrease between leaders and led. How long before the system breaks apart through the dissolution of these invisible bonds between the faithful in the pew and their leaders? I cannot answer that question, but I can continue to challenge the Church to become more a place of integrity, truth and transparency. It does not need crisis management firms to make a success of that. It just needs to pay greater attention to its own foundation documents. It needs to hear one statement repeated. It is the truth that will set you free.
In charging fees for PR or indeed most types of consultancy, the advisor takes into account their own risk in accepting the engagement. The higher the risk, the higher the fee level. This is because taking on work like this carries the risk that they will lose their own reputation if it turns out the client has behaved even worse than they expected. They become tainted by association. Charging high fees isn’t simply profiteering, it acts as a form of “insurance” against future work potentially lost. Conversely one would expect them to be experts in stepping away from the client and explaining away their associations, if it all goes wrong.
From the financial probity side of things you do wonder how a charity, and in particular a Christian organisation, can justify spending carefully donated funds in this way. Tax relief will most likely have been claimed too. In effect, some of the secular world is being expected to subsidise this expensive world of spin.
There is I think a world of difference between hiring professionals, to put your best foot forward, so to speak, and hiring professionals to cover up serious misconduct in the knowledge that complainants will be further harmed by your actions. I can can imagine innocent and legitimate reasons for the former. I can see decent people taking Andrew Graystone’s stand. After all if someone has done something wrong on your watch without your prior knowledge, the blame does not lie with you unless you cover up for them, allow them to get away with misconduct, and create a culture where the whole scenario can be repeated. There appear to be too many leaders in the Church who wish to appear decent and respectable at the cost often of the mental and other well-being of others, even children. In other words they put themselves first, their reputations or reputations of friends and colleagues first, and appear not to care at all about who they damage in the process. As long as it’s not them of course. At times as seen in Oxford the scenario is played out so that a person or a small group of people can get their own way. Nothing else counts. The fact that this appears to be endemic and widespread tells us much about church leaders and prominent people connected with the church. Suddenly we can all see that the wolves have clothed themselves in lambskins. And there are many more than we could have imagined. Hence reputation management experts are brought in, not at the cost of those employing them. Then the power struggle magnifies making it close to impossible for any kind of justice to be done, and safe procedures followed. We have witnessed this for ourselves, and know it is not isolated behaviour. Some of us have experienced it ourselves at the wrong end of the power struggle. Andrew Graystone and others have detailed it in the public domain. So the question is not does it happen? The question for me is what can I do about it? Am I willing to act on the side of justice? Should I act from within to help rid the Church from its scandalous behaviour? Or is it better to join those who have left hoping the institution dies. The problem with that being that any new institution will in turn be subject to human failings. I would just like to make clear that when I write about taking action, I am aware that not everyone can and not everyone should. I myself have nearly been beaten down to the point of almost breakdown. Not everyone can, or should take action. If this is you you have my sympathy. I don’t have all the answers, even in my own personal situation. But I have come to the conclusion doing nothing is the worst option, except at those times I need a break to keep sane. And this blog is one way to take action. You may prefer other ways. It all helps.
Part of the problem is the evolution of the PR profession. One of the founders of PR in the UK was Alan Campbell-Johnson (1913-96), who handled accounts for Esso, Coca Cola and Imperial Tobacco from the 1950s as part of Masius & Ferguson, and then for his own agency, until he sold his interest to the American PR group, Hill & Knowlton in 1978.
Campbell-Johnson had, along the way, acted as press secretary for Sir Archibald Sinclair (secretary of state for air, 1940-45, and the then Liberal leader – Campbell-Johnson stood for Salisbury in 1950 in the Liberal interest), ‘selling’ the Air Ministry to the public and other departments, and then for Lord Mountbatten during the latter’s viceroyalty, when he was obliged to relate the Raj’s story to the public, and to keep a diary of negotiations with Congress and the Muslim League to which the viceroy could refer. The manner in which India was partitioned was then, and has remained, enormously controversial, and this was one of the reasons why Campbell-Johnson published ‘Mission with Mountbatten’ (1951), based on the diary entries, with Mountbatten’s approval. As he saw it, the purpose of a press secretary – whether acting in a viceregal or commercial capacity – is to explain to his/her master the public relations consequences of any decision made as a part of the overall calculation, and then to explain to the public why the decision has been made as it has.
Therefore, as far as Campbell-Johnson was concerned, the PR man should not be a spin doctor. The purpose of PR was to tell the truth, and he pressed this principle forcefully during his presidency of the Institute of Public Relations.
However, the PR professional is retained by his/her client. S/he has a duty not to cause undue prejudice to that client. There is therefore an inherent tension between professional standards and the interests of the client. It is therefore often the case that PR becomes problematic when those two principles clash. Campbell-Johnson was vehemently opposed to ‘spin doctors’: PR professionals who overstep the bounds of their brief by molding policy and, therefore, the story or vice versa.
I think that much of the problem with Luther Pendragon is either that they have overstepped the mark or, perhaps more likely, that they cannot relate the truth without causing undue prejudice to their clients. Therefore, survivors ought to be looking to the clients for explanations rather than to their front-men. It seems likely that LP have been retained not only to manage the Church’s problems, but to act as a shield or lightning rod for decisions made by the Church. Their fee may therefore, in part, be the premium they charge for taking a battering on behalf of the Church, of Christ Church dons and other ‘difficult’ clients.
You will recall that the beast had his image in the book of Revelation and that the image even came to life to confuse people. Grim.
‘This firm [Luther Pendragon] has been retained at considerable expense by the dioceses of London and Winchester, among others’.
Are the actual costs disclosed anywhere in the accounts of the dioceses who use them?
And who documents the personal cost to innocent people caught up in these expensive machinations?
There probably is a correlation between the amounts they fear they might otherwise have to pay out, and the quantum of PR expense. The more they pay, and the more expensive the agency, the more they think they’d have to pay.
Many of us see a different picture of these fees, as being indicative of something to hide.
I agree that PR is an important function. The way you communicate something obviously can make a good intention sound crass and end up needlessly upsetting people. Witness the current senior chaps committing gaff after gaff.
But, and I apologise for the northern crudeness, “you can’t polish a turd”.
No need to apologise for the northerners’ admirable ability to identify a soiled spade as a bloody shovel!
In the case of Winchester they have been well hidden. One can only assume they are buried in the slush fund marked “Governance” where 1.5 million of “charitable expenditure” has been grabbed by the diocese.
How would £1.5 million compare with the admin costs of another diocese of similar size and make-up?
Winchester’s accounts were filed just three weeks ago, and so are up to date. There’s an unidentified sum of £58,000 alongside the £1.5 million. When I looked at the filed accounts of Ch Ch Oxford (admittedly that was some time ago), they were equally silent about identifying payments to specific PR consultants. I have never ventured into London’s accounts.
I see that the Winchester accounts are signed off by +Tim Dakin. They are, of course, audited independently.
From memory, the Diocesan accounts I’ve seen are about £8m annual turnover? Does that sound right?
Not sure how you define turnover – I am not an accountant! The latest filed accounts for the year ending 31st December 2020 show income of £13.52 million, broken down under a number of headings, by far the most substantial being donations and from legacies £11.21 million. Total expenditure was £12.47 million of which £12.41 million was attributable to charitable activities. The trustees report that the Covid epidemic has had a significant impact, whereas the loss of the Channel Islands did not. I’m afraid any more detailed analysis of the accounts must be left to experts
I was a diocesan communications director for more than 25 years. It is very different in reality…The crisis I helped with included helping clergy respond to the Harold Shipman murders – leading thinking on what role the church should have (involved getting clergy ready for interviews, organising a community service which the media carried to 14 million people).
Then there was the Alder Hey children remains scandal – I helped clergy evolve pastoral responses to mothers who had gone to the media angry that they could not build memorials on the graves of other people.
Then there was Sony using the interior of Manchester Cathedral as a backdrop of a violent game.
Also helping clergy with difficult funerals which had attracted media attention (fathers murdering their children, kids being killed in gun battles).
Then there were the mission campaigns – Back to Church Sunday, The national Christmas campaigns, The Real Easter Egg campaign and battling OFWAT in the Rain Tax campaign saving churches £365 million a year in rain water charges…
So church crisis communications is really about mission and supporting the church…
Thanks David, we need a rounded picture. Evidently, sadly, it isn’t always like that.
Thanks David for your contribution, which contains fine examples of your craft.
Were you involved with examples of clergy abuse and how to respond to these? Perhaps you would give examples of these responses, if you were.
On using the cathedral for the background for a violent game, although this is one way to get people into a church background, describing it as mission, is a bit of a stretch?
On the rainwater campaign I found this quote in the Guardian: ‘The Bishop of Salisbury, David Stancliffe, told parliament that the tax will cost the Church of England more than £15m per annum.’ I know the Guardian isn’t always correct, and this was just a quick search, but are you sure about the £365m annual savings?
David listed the Sony use of Manchester Cathedral under the ‘crises’ category, not under ‘mission’.
No I never said which was crisis or mission. In my experience they are often tha same.
I’d assumed the cathedral’s coffers received a fee. Perhaps not.
One thing that did strike me from David’s comments was the centrality of his work. Some of it appeared to be close to or actual leadership, or at least what would be expected of senior leadership. Obviously some matters are well outside the experience and training of clergy, but it is becoming clearer how much adjunctive expertise operates alongside the senior clergy.
I wonder how much idea many entrants to holy orders have, of the matters they are likely to encounter, for example your own experiences too Janet. Time to revisit selection and training protocols perhaps?
In the communications academic literature the higher in the management structure communications is the better it is. Yes I was often part of the senior leadership team in the church and other organisations.
I think there is an issue and need for theologically educated comms people who work for the church.
Thanks Steve. I’ve taken some time to think about this (you often make me stop and think!).
I absolutely agree that some media training ought to be part of clergy training. When in 1987 I was interviewed by the Yorkshire Post prior to being ordained deacon, I was completely unprepared. It hadn’t even occurred to me that, since women being admitted to holy orders (and therefore wearing a dog collar) was a new thing for Anglicans, the press might be interested. I never saw the resulting article, since I was in my pre-ordination retreat when it appeared, and that’s probably just as well!
Neither did we have any training whatsoever in how to handle the sort of newsworthy crises which can crop up without warning in any parish, at any time. A single lesson looking at how the clergy functioned re, for example, the Soham murders; the Manchester bombings (IRA and at the Ariana Grand concert); and the Salisbury poisonings would have been very useful. I hope these things are now part of theological colleges’ curriculum.
On the other hand, I do believe that clergy training needs to include theological and theoretical as well as practical elements such as these. A good grasp of first principles is essential in applying practical knowledge. I’m out of touch with clergy training so maybe all this has been sorted (but I doubt it!).
Thanks David. I have had some very good experiences of diocesan comms officers – not least in Manchester Diocese – who have been helpful in all sorts of situations. I rate you among the good ones. Comms officers have helped me deal with situations like the following: an ecumenical colleague who wanted to store and distribute obscene material from the chaplaincy; a parish colleague who was outed by the News of the World after advertising for sex; frequent media interviews about cults in Manchester; the gruesome murder of a student and the resulting trial (which I attended in a supporting role); massive publicity around the first ordinations of women to the priesthood; and and being at the centre of an ongoing battle with criminals on the estate where I was vicar. I really don’t know how I would have managed without good comms advice and support.
However, it seems to me that a good diocesan comms officer, who helps clergy with difficult situations such as you describe, and works on getting positive stories into the media, is different from a high-powered reputation management agency brought in to assist with a cover up. The canny comms officer is a force for good, but the reputation management company is too often a force for evil.
I never mentioned the management of diocesan reputation, which I also did. Far from evil however I do feel an agency has to be managed properly and stick to basic rules:tell the truth, help the organisation achieve its aims and reflect its values.
As dioceses cannot be held accountable by law for horrendously poor performances in abuse cases, only individual abusers can, it does mean that the law is often complicit in covering up truly appalling and life changing responses and thus managing the reputation of the church.
Imagine if survivors could claim legal damages against dioceses for dreadful responses which replay abuse, the reputation would crumble however good the PR.
Institutional abuse? I know they don’t do anything, but I’d think it would be recognised. Outside in the real world, these things are known. It’s about systems.
There’s another northernist aphorism we all know: “where there’s muck there’s brass”. And external specialists are certainly cleaning up on the fees side, even if this isn’t specifically disclosed in published accounts.
There are current crises but also horrific past transgressions to be addressed or silent about depending on the advice given. Sometimes it feels like external firms are used in attempt to distance the Church from what went on, as if the intermediary will somehow take away the terrible burden, if that were possible. Actually it often seems to have the opposite effect, to make matters worse.
Janet is right about the need for media training, for example, but I believe the need for breadth of wisdom in addressing these big , almost seismic challenges, is essential.
But on training, much more could be done. Having the dubious advantage of more than one profession, I was struck after training in chartered accountancy, how little I knew. You had to study various subjects such as law and economics. At the start it seemed straight forward, by the end you realised you’d only just begun. Conscious incompetence is the realisation. I now don’t believe anyone can lead at a senior level without significant training across specialties and even more important, actual experience. Nothing beats trial and error on a small scale to prevent larger errors on a much greater scale.
If you are trying to subcontract significant parts of your leadership, you’re not really leading at all, because you won’t be able to gauge if what they’re suggesting is right or not.
I do apologise if I’ve said this before, but it seems like some senior appointments are deliberately filled by people who can’t possibly have the requisite experience. But this is for another day perhaps.
The best publicity I’ve seen from the churches has been actual helping with disasters. Two trains collided recently near Salisbury and many were sadly injured. The local church opened its doors and provided shelter for the casualties and support for the triage team. Brilliant mission right there and no words needed.
Yes, when I referred to the crises that pop up in parishes and how clergy had handled them, I meant far more than how they handled the media. I was thinking too of how they gave practical help and comforted those in need – or didn’t. But rereading my comment I see I didn’t make that at all clear, so thank you, Steve.
Thanks Janet, I appreciated the scope of your comments as always!