[…] the results of my small survey - including responses from 101 editors, section editors, journalists and IT managers - showed just how much those working on news desks disliked the PR industry - despite their growing reliance on it. So much of what is being thrown at them is completely irrelevant - if it gets to them at all.

What does get through - and 95 per cent reported problems with email of which around a quarter said it was ‘every day' - is sent in ways which either crash their systems or can't be opened because their employers simply cannot afford to upgrade software on 200 computers as regularly as a small PR agency of just a few people can - and does.

And that is just for ‘traditional' text and pictures. The message that a national newspaper can happily use a picture - even across several columns - if it is only a few hundred Kb in size has not got through to the PR people, who keep sending out 10Mb files at a time.

Move on to ‘new' media and the situation is even worse, with the same issues of incompatible file types, too large files, poor quality content and stuff that is ‘just not newsworthy' topping the list of complaints. A senior manager within ITV told me just last week how one station struggled for several hours to get video sent by a fire brigade into a format suitable for broadcast, but ran out of time and the bulletin went out minus the footage.