On reflection

On reflection

It was the venerable Malcolm Muggeridge who first described public relations as "organised lying". This week Nick Davies took up his mantle, revealing in his new book Flat Earth News that around 80% of newspaper reports are wholly, or partially, constructed from press releases and agency copy.

Financial PRs are the industry's highest paid, and for the most part are charming and manipulative, especially during a hostile takeover battle. Personal finance PR is at the rather more mundane end of the spectrum - but don't confuse dull for innocuous.

It's a huge industry, and incredibly successful at creating a consensus around products pushed on to millions of people.

In the 80s, virtually every bank, building society and insurance company issued press releases extolling the virtue of endowments. Soon enough, everyone thought you had to have one to get a mortgage. No one opposed it.

In the 90s it was personal pensions. This decade we've seen payment protection insurance pushed with vacuously repeated promises of "peace of mind" when all they want is a piece of your wallet. It's the same for buy-to-let. Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of press officers are paid to push these products. I know of no-one paid to oppose buy-to-let, despite the wreckage it is causing in the housing market.

This week the Independent National Housing and Planning Advice Unit revealed we're paying around £90 a month extra on our mortgages because of buy-to-let.....continued below

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investors.

Yet the NHPAU felt compelled to add: "In any analysis of buy-to-let, it is important to consider the wider benefits." Why? Because hundreds of PRs say so, that's why. Substitute "endowments" for buy-to-let in that sentence. Now you're closer to the truth.

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