Lord Bell claims that the Independent sting has had no impact

In a report in PR Week this week, Lord Bell, chairman of Chime Communications, the group that owns Bell Pottinger, claimed that questions about the conduct of the company’s PR division have had no effect on trading.

Bell Pottinger were last year subject to a sting operation, carried out by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and published by the Independent, in which senior members of the firm were caught boasting about their influence in Westminster.

Bell claims, in the interview with PR Week, that the negative press ‘had no effect whatsoever.  The phone never stops ringing – we’re pitching all the time and continuing to win business.’  I think that Lord Bell has rather missed the point here, to claim that the affair had ‘no effect whatsoever’ shows astonishing arrogance and disregard for basic ethics and the impact that this scandal has on the wider PR community.

This is not simply a trading issue and I would hope that rather than having no effect at all, the rather distasteful affair has had the effect of causing Bell Pottinger to take a long hard look at its business practices and consider the ethics of its actions.