The former public affairs secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury has attacked the Church’s ‘substandard’ comms operation.
Rev. George Pitcher, who until September was secretary for public affairs to the Archbishop of Canterbury, has written a column in the Church Times that lambastes the Church of England’s PR people.
‘The truth is that there really are some top operators in media and public affairs at Church House and elsewhere, but there are also those who wouldn’t last 20 minutes in the public sector, let alone in private enterprise,’ writes Pitcher in the column that is published today.
‘For these people, journalists and politicians are either mad, bad or dangerous to know. They might have Wendy Cope’s “Never trust a journalist” poem pinned to their corkboard. Some of the ordained, shamefully, calculate that three to five years in such a role is worth ten to 12 years of that boring old parish work in their journey of entitlement to a deanery or the senior common room of an Oxbridge college.’
by Matt Cartmell, in PR Week