Congratulations came in from all sides of the Barbados business community today as Butterfield Bank managed to get the Barbados Advocate to print a press release almost-verbatim. No fact checking, no reference to external sources, no real commentary, no actual news, just pure unadulterated reliance on a piece of paper sent in by Butterfield’s marketing department. Our question is this: How in the name of all that is good can the following initial sentence in the article possibly constitute a news item,
“BARBADIANS have been assured of more high quality services from the Butter- field Bank…”. There’s also some fluff in the piece, provided by Butterfield, about “controversy surrounding the banking sector” as a way of exclusively revealing that “banks have staff costs, it also costs them a lot of money to run ATM machines and other facilities”. Well that’s allright then.
And while we’re feeling vindictive and petty, they can’t even get the name right. It’s “Butterfield”, not “Butter-field” you journalistically sloppy, blithering idjits.
