Why do all three leaders have an image problem?

In this age of 24 hour media, spin doctors, image consultants and press advisers, it really amazes me that all three leaders have a significant image problem.

Brown is seen as distant and struggles to connect with voters. Cameron, no matter how he tries, is still seen as a toff and  smarmy (mainly because he is, credit to the public where credit is due). Clegg simply doesn’t have an image.

I thought Brown’s interview with Piers Morgan last night was very good. He seemed relaxed, witty, real and engaging. I think that the interview will pay off and hopefully will show a increasing tightening in the polls. Brown didn’t seem like the distant professor but he seemed like an average everyday man, someone you might want to have a beer with.

However, Brown said something that dumbfounded me. It was in regards to the infamous YouTube video last year. Brown said that he asked his advisers should he have another go at it because he wasn’t happy with it, but his advisers said it was fine. I’m hoping, whoever that was, has been sufficiently rebuked because they failed at the number one priority of their job – to make their boss look good. I’ve written before that I thought Brown had been getting bad advice – clearly I was right.

But are all three getting such bad advice? The Cameron poster debacle make me think his marketing team is failing as well. Cameron asked in PMQs would Labour MPs want Brown’s face on their campaigning documents, but I think some Tories are probably distancing themselves from his image now too.

Clegg is struggling to get any spotlight at the moment, but when the media will be obliged to give the Lib-Dems some column inches during the campaign, I’m sure this will change, but not my much.

So, who’s fault is it, the advisers or the candidates?

And Murdoch wants us to pay for this?

By Nick Osborne

I know a lot of these points have been written about them before, but I thought it would be worth revisiting them and combining them. I thought of this when I saw the video from Sky News Australia that Alex Smith wrote about this morning on Labour List.

In this video at the Murdoch managed to call Obama racist, agreeing with the appalling Glenn Beck from FOX News. He also goes into detail about his plan to charge online users of his newspapers such as the Sun and the Times, stating that people should have to pay for all online news and the public has been getting away with free news for far too long. In a way, I can understand his point from a purely commercial point of view, we pay for exactly the same thing on paper after all.

And Murdoch wants us to pay for this?

But I resent having to pay for stories like the recent misspelled letter fiasco from Gordon Brown. What is especiallyawful about this is the fact that they couldn’t get the name right either, appalling. Thanks to Harry’s place for picking up this article. This was purely vindictive in my opinion.

Murdoch also had a go at Google for “stealing content” earlier in October and suggested that all aggregators were thieves.

Suffice to say, Murdoch managed to annoy plenty of people on his recent tour of Australia. As well as his rants about Obama and charging for news, in separate interviews (given to Murdoch owned newspapers The Australian and Melbourne’s Herald Sun), he called Kevin Rudd delusional and implied that he had better watch out in the coming election year by pointing to the anti-Gordon Brown sentiment in the UK media, hinting at the Sun’s conversion to the Tories.

We all know the media has huge power over the will of the people through the media, but is Murdoch essentially weilding his power over Heads of State? Apparently Murdoch doesn’t think much of Rudd for attempting to change global thinking regarding climate change and also called him over-sensitive.

To be honest, I don’t know what scares me more; the fact that Murdoch thinks he has this power, or the fact that he probably does.

Thoughts?

He may be on holidays, but the PM is still in charge

I’ve been a tad stunned by the reports over the past couple of weeks regarding who is in power with the Prime Minister on holidays and as a person who studied, trained and for a while practiced as a journalist, there are a number of issues that I feel are worth discussing. The headlines that have really surprised me revolve around Gordon Brown’s two Parliamentary lieutenants, Harriet Harmon and Lord Mandelson both having overlapping holidays, which allegedly meant that that there was no one in charge of the country for two whole days.

I’ve heard of media beat-ups before and I know the British media like to attack their own representatives constantly – just look at what they are doing to the English cricket team after their loss to Australia on Sunday (not that I’m complaining about that mind you). But to think that just because the Prime Minister is on holidays… in his own constituency… in the UK, there is no one in charge shows that it is actually the journalists who have gone on holidays.

When the PM was in Italy for the G8, he was still in charge. Just because Harriet Harman represented him at Prime Minister’s Questions, doesn’t mean she suddenly became PM. If there was an issue of national importance, Gordon Brown would undoubtedly be running the show.

The PM, much to Sarah Brown’s annoyance I’m sure, will still be flanked by advisers and will no doubt be spending a good deal of his ‘down time’ discussing policy, strategies and politics. A PM couldn’t just shut down even if he wanted to.

The Prime Minister is always in charge, that is what he was elected (or not in this case) to do. Pre Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, telegraph communications and electricity, I could understand the argument, but not now.

However, mostly this is summer headline grabbing journalism and if this is what Mr Murdoch wants us to pay for online, I’ll pass thanks.

Cross posted with Ruder Finn UK Dot Comms