Door drop marketing firm hits back at Panorama
Door drop marketing firm Link Direct has written to BBC director general Mark Thompson demanding a right to reply after claiming a Panorama programme fundamentally misrepresented its industry.
Chris Roxburgh, a director of the Birkenhead-based company, said he was "furious" with the 'Why Hate Junk Mail?' episode broadcast on BBC One last week.
“This programme was fundamentally flawed, clumsy, ill informed and unbalanced,” he said. “I am demanding from Mark Thompson the opportunity of putting our industry’s side of the story as a matter of priority to try and correct the damage this programme has done to a sector than supports 280,000 jobs.”
Roxburgh said the programme failed to make a clear enough distinction between advertising mail and scam mail.
“This was an appalling journalistic misjudgement,” he said.
“Our sector has nothing whatsoever to do with scam mail and it is outlandish and deeply damaging to us that we were thrust into the spotlight with this criminal activity. Immediately we were tarred with the negative connotations of criminality and the lines between junk mail and scam mail became far too blurred.
"A Panorama investigation examining the scourge of scam mail would have a far more sensible and legitimate programme. To drag door drop into this debate however was utterly wrong and has smeared us by association.”