#fleet street

[famousinuniverse]

Fleet Street, London, United Kingdom: Red double-decker buses on Fleet Street with the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral and skyscrapers in the financial district of City of London, London, England, United Kingdom, Europe. Fleet Street is a street in Central London, England. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary of the Cities of London and Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was named. The street has been an important through route since Roman times. Wikipedia

[houseofbrat]

As someone who works in PR I am ASTONISHED at how bad Kensington Palace is at all of this. It’s the most interesting part of the whole thing for me. Well that, and how much it seemingly vindicates H&M and Harry in particular in what he’s said about the firm and the media’s role in protecting the Heir at all costs.

Yeah I work in PR for a public company and anytime we want to put something out we have to run it up the chain - we need legal and Investor relations and executive approvals.

Even if KP and BP had their individual PR teams, which makes sense, there should still be one main central PR office that everyone answers to that manages the entire royal families PR, makes sure schedules and press opportunities and STRATEGY AND MESSAGING all aligns, before running up the chain for final approvals. There’d be a social team and a crisis team and government relations team and a branding team and a general “talent rep” kind of team, all working in tandem to serve the overall strategy for the royal family.

The fact that there are so many cooks in so many different kitchens is why the royal family has had so many PR disasters honestly for decades now. They’re truly doing it all wrong. So many Worst Practices here, not Best Practices.

It really doesn't seem like there is an overall PR team. Just the separate entities

Yeah and that’s the problem IMO. They are a business that should be run like a business. They should have the individual departments I suggested, and even more, working in tandem.

The fact that there are so many separate entities with different agendas and priorities is a huge part of their problem IMO.

But Charles has been transparent for the most part!! And photographed repeatedly. It’s so bizarre when compared to KP, and feels passive aggressive to me to be honest lolol.

They’re really so so so bad at this 😭😭😭😭 but the British public and the media lets them get away with it 🙃🙃🙃

For heaven’s sake. If she’s recovering nicely, why resort to recycling old photos?

Other sources are making a pretty good case for the fact that it’s a November photo, taken after Catherine and the children visited the baby bank.

Does nobody, and I mean nobody, know how to do PR in that place anymore? Now it's pin all of this on just-recovering-from-abdominal-surgery Kate? Why not on William since they were so proud about how he was the one that took the photo? Somehow they keep making everything ten times worse.

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe for a second that Kate personally edited that photo together in such a way that it had to be killed as inauthentic. The pulling of the photo is likely more about the refusal to provide metadata or the raw image for proof rather than silly Photoshop choices. That isn’t an issue of “mummy going wild on the computer,” it’s a larger organizational issue about trust, transparency, and KP’s overall poor approach to news orgs and the press lately.

Why is Kate taking the fall? Why is William such a lout to let an ill Kate put this on her own shoulders rather than admit KP made an error or say KP is going to reevaluate their practices and make a change?

Are college interns running Palace p.r.? Because I cannot understand how they're botching this so badly. If Kate couldn't/wouldn't pose for a legit photo, then just don't release anything. The Royals are basically dumping tankers of gas on the inferno by playing all these games. 

Sorry, am I going insane? After saying they wouldn’t respond to these conspiracy theories, they

a) responded by putting out a doctored image,

b) responded to the backlash of doctored image by claiming the woman recovering from a medical issue was playing around in Photoshop, and

c) responded to the backlash of editing claims by putting out an image where the person in the photo is supposed to be Kate but could LITERALLY BE ANYBODY.

NONE OF YOU ARE FINDING THIS WEIRD? NONE?!

"Kate's Back"

Well, it is indeed a picture of Kate's back

Apparently the main symptom of her mysterious medical condition is that any photo with her in it immediately becomes grainy, blurry, or with people's wrists trying to escape into a fifth dimension.

Good Lord, I haven't followed a disaster story this closely since Oceangate Titan and this one may be even worse. The narrative is out of control and the rules have gone out the window.

They already lost control of the narrative at this point. No matter what they do now, they will be scrutinized more than they've ever been before. And they seem grossly unprepared for it.

She’s not even facing camera, how is this supposed to help? This just feeds the conspiracy theorists! headdesk

It's becoming a PR nightmare that only Olivia Pope can rescue.

Maybe the better question is that people are concerned about Kate's welfare, and most WERE okay with waiting under the timeline KP initially offered that is she will likely return by or after Easter.

However KP has mismanaged the messaging, and with that concern grows over how weird some of the updates are. The article explains why this medical time out is turning into an absolute PR crisis. It isn't so much about Kates right to medical privacy (she definitely deserves that )

It now is about institutional reliability, the heir William's arguably erratic or unusual behavior or his courtiers' comments, the mess with the all kill photoshopped/Frankensteined photo (which has never happened before with a palace released photo), the very different approaches from BP vs KP, etc etc. It's become bigger than Kate sad to say.

And ultimately now people are worried for her, in a way they wouldn't have been, because things have become so irregular and bungled. So the urgency to make sure she is safe and okay has become louder and more insistent.

“CNN is now reviewing all handout photos previously provided by Kensington Palace.”

“In editorial photography, photojournalists and editors commonly adjust a photograph’s exposure or color balance in order to more accurately reflect the scene. Most news organizations, including CNN, regard it as unacceptable to move, change or manipulate the pixels of an image. To do so would alter the reality of the situation the image is intended to document.”

“In the past, the family’s amateur photographs have been well received when posted on social media. But on this occasion, this photo was also released to media organizations as a handout and the palace wasn’t transparent about the fact it had been adjusted.

That will have damaged the trust between the palace and media organizations – many of which, like CNN, will likely be assessing all royal handouts. The editing storm has undermined the existing relationship and when public interest over any possible cover up escalates, as it has done recently, many news outlets will now have take that speculation more seriously.”

[kitaston]

Fleet Street | London by Andrew Davidson

woodcut

[angelholme]

Fuck a doodle do.

In a statement, Prince Harry said the ruling was "vindicating and affirming" and took aim at senior executives and editors including Piers Morgan - who was in charge at the Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004.

Judge Mr Justice Fancourt found Morgan knew about phone hacking at the paper.

He said the Duke's phone was probably only hacked to a modest extent and was "carefully controlled by certain people" from the end of 2003 to April 2009.

Jesus -- this is.... unbelievable.

When asked what he thought the way forward was, he said to scrap the current press regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation, which he likened to a "poodle".

"You have to get independent regulation as Leveson called for, which we haven't got because, there's a self regulator poodle, not a watchdog," he said. 

"You also need to have the Leveson Inquiry restarted or completed... which the government cancelled at the request of those being investigated."

The Tory government should hang its head in shame. I mean -- it won't, but seriously -- this is appalling.

The government has failed to find the courage to hold the press accountable, a media lawyer has said.

Jonathan Coad said that despite Prince Harry's victory, only politicians can bring about real change.

However, it has never ensured the press regulated itself according to the principles set out in the Leveson Inquiry, he said.

"If you're going to be accountable, someone has got to have the courage to hold you accountable," he told Sky News. 

"Harry has fought the battle and said it needs to change, but it is only going to change if politicians have the courage to take on Fleet Street.

"At the moment, they have shown a complete lack of intention of doing so.

What was the Leveson Inquiry and why is it relevant?

In 2011, Judge Sir Brian Leveson led a public inquiry after it was revealed News Of The World journalists had hacked the phone of murdered school girl Milly Dowler.

Initially intended to be carried out in two sections, the first part of the inquiry looked at the culture, practices and ethics of the press. It involved celebrities including Hugh Grant, Sienna Miller, Steve Coogan and Charlotte Church.

Part two of the Leveson Inquiry was meant to investigate the relationship between journalists and the police, but never took place. There have since been calls to re-open it.

[vox-anglosphere]

Workmen dismantling The Daily Telegraph clock in London - 1930

[willowsfanarts]

are you lucky you're a bleeder - latest artwork

[kvetch19]

[georgefairbrother]

Within a year of the end of the Miners’ Strike, another major UK industrial action had dramatic implications for an entire industry’s workforce. This time the disruption involved printers working for Rupert Murdoch’s News International, at that time publisher of The Times, Sun and News of the World.

On February 15th, 1986, BBC News reported;

“…Eight police officers have been injured and 58 people arrested in the worst outbreak of violence yet outside the News International printing plant in Wapping, east London…Police estimated 5,000 demonstrators gathered near the printing works for a mass demonstration…Similar mass protests have taken place regularly outside the Wapping plant ever since the start of a strike three weeks ago over new working conditions and the move from Fleet Street to cheaper premises in East London…”

New computer-based production technologies meant that a significantly reduced workforce would be required to operate the new plant. News International management had secretly secured the cooperation of the EETPU (electricians’ union) and created a parallel workforce. Around 6 000 Fleet Street printworkers were summarily dismissed immediately upon striking, and production began at the new plant with virtually no delay.

Rupert Murdoch said of his dealings with the print unions;

“…For 17 years there, I lay down and had these people run over me. Day after day, week after week, month after month, with bad, idle wasteful practices in all our plants…”

In response to a reporter’s question he denied that he was out to break the printers’ unions, but to preserve his newspapers ‘for the people that do work for them’.

The General Secretary of SOGAT 82 (Society of Graphical and Allied Trades), Brenda (later Baroness) Dean (1943-2018), described the behavior of Murdoch and his company as a ‘conspiracy of deceit’ over secretly recruiting strike-breaking labour while negotiations between her union and News International management were ongoing. Having discussed with police plans for orderly and peaceful picketing, she blamed extreme left and right agitators, a destructive minority ‘rent-a-mob’, for the picket line violence that ensued.

A senior Metropolitan Police officer concurred;

“..We saw the classic example of honest well-intentioned union members supporting their cause being joined by diverse elements whose only interest was in causing as much trouble as possible…”

News International did not lose a single night of production during the thirteen months of industrial action, which resulted in over 1200 arrests and 410 police officers being injured. With echoes of the Miners' Strike, police were accused of aggressive and heavy handed tactics against picketers and also local residents, many of whom were sympathetic to the strikers.

The strike ended in defeat for the unions, and by 1988 all the major national newspapers had moved their printing operations away from Fleet Street with labour saving technology.

[philoursmars]

L'année du Dragon arrive !

Une longue série de dragons arrive... Ici des dragons plus XIXe : un spécial Londres la City (Fleet Street) pour les 4 premières, Leadenhall Market, Horse Guard

[spilledcoffeefrommy]

[houseofbrat]

[link]

[checkoutmybookshelf]

We got *this close* to a Lady Whistledown/Sweeney Todd crossover. Somebody check Penelope's sponsors, because if Lovett's meat pies is in there, we have a PROBLEM.

Like, at the VERY least, give us Colin getting distractedly bad-vibed by a pie or barber shop. SOMETHING.

(I know, I know, the earliest version of the story is 1846, so it's like 20 years too late for the Bridgertons, but I refuse to let literary history ruin a good moment.

For those of you who are interested, the first Sweeney Todd literary arppearance was in a penny dreadful serial. The story was called The String of Pearls: A Romance, and it was published in 18 parts in Edward Lloyd's magazine, The People's Periodical and Family Library, from November 1846 to March 1847.

Then there were a string of other wesions fo this story over the rest of the nineteenth century, and was plagiarized in the US in circa 1852-53.

This is a little complicated by the motifs in the story, which may come from older folklore and urban legents, which date roughly to the middle of the 1600s. So actually, it's vaguely possible that Colin and Penelope would have been aware of some barber on Fleet Street who killed men and his neighbor baked them into pies. They just wouldn't have known the name Sweeney Todd.)

[poemsliz]

Angel in the city

[gentlemanpixelator]

London. Fleet Street and St Pauls.

[backtonormallife]

I really could live a very nice life in all the $£€ H+M have spent on PR.

[vox-anglosphere]

A remarkable tribute to Her Majesty's reign by The Times of London