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October 2, 2008

Finance firm press office bans tabloid journos – for a day

By Duncan wirepost

Sunday Mail writer Charles Lavery was lefty fuming yesterday after the press officer for a financial information company told him it doesn’t deal with tabloid newspapers.

Lavery was seeking to trackdown the “bad guys” who had short-sold shares in Scottish companies and got in touch with Data Explorers, a London based stocks and shares forensic examination firm.
He said that the press officer he spoke to “refused to discuss anything once she had confirmed she was speaking to a dreaded tabloid journalist.”
“I wanted them to help me make sense of the shares being bought in the lead up to the banking crisis in this country but hey ho, I didn’t work for the Sunday Times or the Telegraph so that was that. I was even prepared to pay for the service.
“It is hard to believe in this day and age that massive companies like this can still live in the dark ages when it comes to dealing with the press.”
Apparently there had been some past unpleasantness involving a story in the Mail on Sunday.
Lavery pointed out that his paper may be a tabloid – but it is big the biggest selling title in Scotland.
Axegrinder got on the case and put a call into the press officer in question – who didn’t seem to want to talk to Press Gazette either.
We’re not even tabloid – but A4 nowadays, which is presumably even worse.
After chasing up high-ups at the company today – Axegrinder was told that it was all a misunderstanding and that Data Explorers was more than happy to provide financial information to journalists across the media.

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