The PR middleman that disclosed the data on UK MP’s expenses turns out to be PR consultant Henry Gewanter from PR agency Positive Profile. Henry appeared on BBC News in an interview where he claims that money was not the motivation to disclose the data that has lead to several members of Gordon Browns government resigning. It remains unclear however if money has actually been paid to the anonymous source that approached Gewanter (through John Wick) for helping to break the story.

As Gewanter says in the interview, what he thought would be an easy leaking job, turned out to be “one of the most difficult, complicated and long-running projects”  of his entire life. Not that newspapers were not interested in the data. But they wanted to use it on their own terms.

One of these conditions according to Gewanter was that any newspaper that wanted to have the information as an exclusive would need to use the full data and not just use it to discredit only some individuals or parties. Another condition was protection of the source including any neccesary legal defence. After approaching several newspapers, only The Daily Telegraph agreed to this.

Now from a PR perspective it remains interesting to ask what the actual motivation of the anonymous source for bringing the information to the public domain was. As Gewanter declines this was financial, could it have been a sense of the interest of the public? From the condition that no MP or party named should be spared to just harm specific indivuals or parties, it seems to be so. Richard Baily on his blog has made some valuable comments to this and also poses the question why a PR intermediary was necessary for this. Additionally he wonders why Gewanter stepped out now to reveal his identity as the PR middleman. As Gewanter says in the interview, before his personal involvement in the matter, already two newspapers had been approached but no agreement was reached. Gewanter has also commented  to Baily’s blog post, but did not provide any answer to why he needed to be involved for the disclosure.

I am really wondering, if it turned out to be so difficult to reach an agreement with a UK newspaper as an exclusive, would it be an option to turn to social media? I mean, everyone can be a publisher nowadays. Setting up a blog is easy, and a lot of companies are doing it to share content that they feel needs to be available to the public. 

With whistle blowers still having to fear for legal consequences, do you think social media offers an opportunity to disclose information to the public?

And if so, how do you feel attention could be drawn to the blog, without the source having to fear his identity could be revealed? Really interested to hear anyone’s comments to this!