"I think PR is unethical" - Maurice Brisson on changes in journalism

Retired BBC News producer Maurice Brisson visited Journalism students at the University of Northampton today (23 November) to discuss the changes in journalism during his career, spanning over 50 years.

Brisson said that he'd "grew with the technology" during the course of his career, admitting that before online news was a thing, he'd been known for spelling curse words horizontally down CFax screens with the beginning letters of news headlines.

He also noted how headlines have changed due to Search Engine Optimisation. Before the birth of online news, you could be witty with your headlines and tease the story, but now you must use as many key words as possible so that your article is the first to come up when searched in a browser.

In terms of news collecting, Brisson seemed almost annoyed at how much it had changed.

"If a musician died, and his music colleagues tweeted, and the newspapers and online would just lift those tweets up...

In my time we wouldn't have tweets. We'd have to call them up."

When asked about friends of his who had moved from being journalists to working in press relations, Brisson referred to them as "poachers turned gamekeepers".

"I'm not sure that it's ethical. But if they want to sell their souls, that's fine."