How to Say Eat Sh#* Without Actually Saying It, or Decoding Quotes in the Newspaper

There’s an unspoken agreement between journalists and the people they interview that certain phrases mean certain things. PR people have carefully honed such quotes for their clients since the days of Bernays.

Drew Kerr decodes some of the classics on his PR Rock-n-Roll blog today.

Kerr–a PR veteran–managed to snag one of the 32 spots in the PRWeek’s linkbait Best Blog competition with just 15 posts to his credit since launch. Albeit they are well-reasoned and edgy op-eds about the industry and we highly recommend reading them. Guess who he’s up against? A little blog called Micropersuasion.

Continued after the jump:

Anyway, Kerr decodes such mainstays as “No comment,” “leaving to spend more time with family,” “lawsuit has no merit,” and the recently fashionable “they ask everybody to respect their privacy at this difficult time”.

He forgot one of my favorites which may harder to find in the wild:

“I’m no expert [scientist, doctor, economist, etc] but…”

This phrase means: “Step off egghead and stop mucking up my stuff with your fact-based analysis.”

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