Although this blog is dedicated to sharing positive, cheery advice on how to get on in the online PR field, the first thing that anyone in communications needs to learn is think about what you’ve written before you press ’send’!

One hapless PR (not that she deserves any sympathy) has discovered  the troubles that can be caused by a thoughtless pun – especially when bloggers and tweeters can make a mistake big news in minutes.

The excellent Lost in Showbiz blog (not connected to the Guardian blog as far as I know) keeps us all our toes, correctly highlighting the pretentiousness, deceit and general, unconvincing uselessness of many press releases.

They’ve got a humdinger today.  Once of the most thoughtless headlines imaginable has destroyed a harmless release about a supposed poll on the best war films of all time.

Here’s the intro, can you spot the obvious error?

From: libby@swns.com [mailto:libby@swns.com]
Sent: 21 April 2009 10:51
To: NationalNews
Subject: SCHINDLER’S LIST IS GREATEST WAR MOVIE

WOULD JEW BELIEVE IT

NEWS COPY

Schindler’s List was yesterday (Tue) named the greatest war movie of all time.

Read more at Lost in Showbiz

Thanks to Twitter and other social networking sites, this story is flying around quicker than you can say “viral marketing”.

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