A move today by UBS which Sir Humphrey Appleby would surely have described as “very brave Prime Minister”, or perhaps even “extremely courageous”.
The bank didn’t much care for the work of the FT’s Stephen Morris on its latest results and took to Twitter.
From its corporate account, it tweeted “embarrassing reporting from @sjhmorris at the FT”.
Morris is then accused of getting his numbers wrong and of “agenda journalism”.
The replies from other journalists were not flattering to UBS. I think in such circumstances hacks are always going to back other hacks.
The bigger issue is not whether UBS has a point, but whether this is a sensible plan, communications wise.
I do have some sympathy for the flaks. Hacks do sometimes start with agendas from which they can be difficult to budge. I’m not sure complaining on Twitter is going to get the desired response.
Perhaps it’s unfair that hacks can moan on Twitter about big companies all they like and companies can’t really moan about the hacks, but I think that’s how it is….