There have been many obituaries written about newspapers.
Their power has been said to be waning for several years and the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated a decline in circulations and advertising revenues.
But despite all this, the press can still pack a powerful punch, as one company found out to its cost when it was the centre of an extraordinary article.
Tech company iAbra and its partners had appeared to be on the crest of a wave earlier this month.
It was basking in the glow of extensive trade media coverage of its new 20-second saliva-based Covid test, something we were told would achieve what we all want – it would “get the world moving again”.
This small firm, of just four employees, were positioned as heroes and the share price of its manufacturing partner TT Electronics had soared by more than 40 per cent following the announcement.
A job well done you might think – until the Financial Times came along that is.
Its article headlined ‘Is the company with a 20-second coronavirus test for real?’, not only raised many questions about the test, known as Virolens, but also ridiculed those involved, and serves as a great media training reminder on the power of print.
It said: “If it works, it could offer a route out of the coronavirus crisis and prove a remarkable testament to the ingenuity of a man with no formal scientific education.
“But the early excitement also shows people’s collective desperation for a silver bullet and willingness to suspend disbelief.”
It went on to describe iAbra as an “obscure tech company”’ and as an "unlikely company to deliver such a product’ and pointed out that none of the ‘employees has any expertise in viruses or microscopy".
And it didn’t stop there.
The article also reported that Heathrow and Leidos – a US software company - had not placed any orders for the test, despite iAbra’s press release referring to them as “launch partners”.
And it said the University of Bristol had distanced itself from reports of its involvement in the testing of the product.
Finally, there was this line:
“The credentials of the technology are further muddied by apparent connections to an organisation that spent decades working on hoaxes about the fictional monster Big Foot.”
It’s a pretty painful read, which you can find here, and you can only imagine how it was received by those organisations involved in the development of this rapid test, as they began to see how it was being covered.
Heathrow, which had provided a particularly enthusiastic quote for the press release from its chief executive John Holland-Kaye, including urging the government to “fast track the technology” certainly backtracked rapidly. A spokesperson told the Financial Times it had no insight into the test’s accuracy – which makes you wonder why it wanted the government to fast track it - and added that it was “not endorsing” iAbra.
iAbra’s chief executive Greg Compton responded by sort of apologising for the confusion around the launch partners.
He was quoted as saying: “If we made a slight, slight miswording of [our release], I apologise for everybody, but fundamentally, we’re trying to do a good thing for humanity as quickly as possible.”
On the Bristol University point, he added that any misrepresentation in the press release had not been “done with any malice”. And he described the TT Electronics share price jump as “chicken feed”.
A non-apology, apology if ever there was one, and we’ve covered quite a few of those recently in this media training blog.
A spokesperson subsequently backtracked further saying: “'Virolens is a new application of AI technology that has been developed collaboratively over the past ten years.
'It has the potential to make a significant difference to Covid testing, but it is currently embarking on functional and clinical trials and it wouldn't be appropriate to comment further until the results of those are known. We are poised to roll out once we receive the requisite approval.'
That is certainly a different tone to the press release and initial media coverage.
So, what can we learn from this?
Well, you can see why iAbra’s press release gained coverage. It certainly ticks off a lot of the components that we tell delegates on our media training courses makes something newsworthy.
In particular, it ticks the ‘trouble’ and ‘unusual’ boxes, promising something that has so far alluded the biggest companies and richest countries – quick and reliable coronavirus tests.
The problem is that the information in that press release doesn’t seem to be all that accurate.
Bold claims certainly help to gain a journalist’s attention, but that information needs to be correct. If it falls apart under scrutiny, then what was intended as a positive story can quickly become one that could threaten your reputation and cause it lasting damage.
And secondly, newspapers are operating in a particularly challenging environment, but those reporters who have survived the job cuts are still determined to hold people and organisations to account and not simply copy and paste press release claims.
There is still plenty of life in the nation’s papers.
A recent Press Gazette report says that UK news readership – those reading print and online versions of newspapers – currently stands at an estimated 28 million daily readers. This content is reaching 43 million people per week and 46 million people a month.
And the Financial Times, which reported this story, has significant global appeal, with 70 per cent of its readers based outside the UK.
There remains, it would appear, an ongoing demand for trusted sources of news and many still see that coming from newspapers – particularly when they show the level of scrutiny displayed here.
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