The not-so-silly season...

20 Dec 2023

Does the media close down for two weeks over Christmas? With the holidays just around the corner, many businesses assume that newspapers, broadcast and digital publications will also pause their operations over the festive season. In this report, Laura Mattar from Withersworldwide joins DRD’s Rupert Bhatia to warn that this is not the case, urging businesses to remain vigilant in the face of heightened media scrutiny.

As we get closer to Christmas and the New Year, variants of the same corporate conversation will emerge time-and-again. It usually involves something along the lines of:

“Oh, don’t worry – the press winds down over Christmas.”

“Journalists are on holiday, so we can relax from a media perspective.”

“It’s a terrible time to put anything out, it’s just NORAD Santa tracking and New Year fireworks – nothing gets covered.”

At the risk of sounding a touch Scrooge-like, subscribing to any of the above statements is a risky, and, frankly, out-of-date strategy. While it is true that some journalists take the festive period off, the news cycle doesn’t simply stop for two weeks.

In many cases journalists without children are asked to do extra shifts, to give those with young families a better chance of an uninterrupted break. Elsewhere an army of freelancers are relied on – in both the press and broadcast news industries.

While it is true that some journalists take the festive period off, the news cycle doesn’t simply stop for two weeks.

Rupert Bhatia, DRD Partnership

Hungry freelance journalists can pose a reputational threat to clients as they have more time and, sometimes drive, to uncover stories that others might not. Their greater deployment at this time of year is something to be wary of.

If we take last year’s festive period as an example, there was no shortage of damaging stories:

  • Meta agreed to pay $725m to settle the Cambridge Analytica case on the 23rd of December.
  • A US investigation was launched into Southwest Airlines following thousands of flight cancellations in the run up to Christmas on the 28th of December.
  • The controversial ‘influencer’ Andrew Tate was arrested on suspicion of human trafficking on the 30th of December.

It’s also worth considering that the Christmas period is one of the few times of year where people, with more free time on their hands, are more likely to read newspapers cover-to-cover. This might explain, at least anecdotally, why more so-called ‘long-reads’ tend to make so many festive appearances.

Legal teams, in particular those specialising in crisis management, don’t shut down over the Christmas period either.

Although the Courts are usually in vacation, the High Court will still hear certain urgent applications which would include injunctive relief. Proceedings may well be served over the festive period too.

By way of a recent example from last year, in the case of Stoute v News Group Newspapers Limited [2023] EWCA Civ 523, photos of Mr and Mrs Stoute were taken whilst they were in Barbados on their Christmas holidays.  They were approached by a journalist for NGN late on 30 December 2022 who stated that they intended to publish those photographs in The Sun on Sunday on 1 January 2023. The next day (New Years Eve) an application was made for an interim injunction to restrain publication of those photos with the injunction hearing held later that very same day.  An interim injunction was granted in respect of some photos, but not others. This example highlights that where newspapers don’t stop over Christmas and NY, neither do solicitors or the Courts.

Although the Courts are usually in vacation, the High Court will still hear certain urgent applications which would include injunctive relief. Proceedings may well be served over the festive period too.

Laura Mattar, Withersworldwide

Once an article has been published or a piece broadcast, options to prevent further damage narrow.

Christmas doesn’t remove the need to act quickly to preserve and protect your reputation.

For all enquiries over the festive period, you can contact DRD at info@drdpartnership.com. To contact Withersworldwide, please email laura.mattar@withersworldwide.com.