A weekly roundup of media news and talking points, sans effort

 

Thought for the Week

“#WhyImVotingUkip – to stand up for white, middle class, middle aged men w sexist/racist views, totally under represented in politics today.” Jasmine Lawrence, a channel editor at BBC News, via her personal Twitter account on Wednesday, with the statement resulting in her being removed from official coverage of the European Elections after failing to fall in line with the broadcaster’s position on impartiality and social media (don’t post anything privately you wouldn’t say on air). Her Twitter account is now closed.
 

Weekly High

Proof that Brazil 2014 is almost here has been coming in thick and fast recently, and this Citroen advert has to be up there with our favourites thanks to its straight up comedy value. It’s a French commercial, but the joke is pretty much international.

Weekly Low

This almost made it onto our weekly highs, such is the ingeniousness of what happened, but from a brand perspective it’s very, very bad news. An employee at Sainsburys’ Mornington Crescent store in London who worked in the bakery has been writing 17-syllable Japanese Haiku poems, of a distinctly dark and melancholic nature, and hiding them in bags of cookies. Here are two examples, neither of which paint the supermarket giant in a particularly good light…

 
 

Stories to keep an eye on

*Ukraine will hold a presidential election on Monday, in the face of increasing violence between pro-Russian factions in the country’s east and government forces attempting to take back control of major administrative buildings in towns and cities across the region. 

*Increasing fears over online security have led Facebook to announce a change to the privacy settings of posts, which will now be set to ‘Friends Only’ by default, rather than ‘Everyone’ as is the currently modus.
 

Just in case you missed it…

Tunepics is the latest social media app looking to make it big in the already-saturated marketplace. Headed up by Justin Cooke, former marketing big gun at Topshop, the idea is that users can match photo posts with 30-second clips of songs via an iTunes link-up. Read our thoughts on a morning spent tinkering here.
If there is a success story, blunder, or news event you’d like to see included email helloATsmokinggun.co.uk or tweet using #blaggersblog. Happy Friday!