A former Irish Times staff photographer has criticised PR firms and has called them “lazy” in their use of scantily-clad models for photocalls. Speaking on Liveline on RTE Radio 1 today, Tom Lawlor was commenting on a listener’s call who phoned into Joe Duffy to complain about celebrity chef Neven Maguire posing with a model in a bikini as a publicity exercise for Food & Wine magazine.
The magazine’s publisher, Norah Casey, apologised for the photo and said she was opposed to the gratuitous use of women and sexual imagery for PR purposes. She had not known beforehand that the new PR firm that was hired to handle the photocall planned to use a scantily-clad model alongside Maguire. If she had been aware, she would have immediately put a stop to it.
Michael O’Doherty, publisher, VIP, phoned into the show and accused Lawlor and Casey of “skirting around the issue”. He said the fact that the issue was being covered on Liveline in the first place and it was being discussed on national radio was related to the power of publicity and the appeal that images of half-naked models have for tabloid newspapers.
Callers into the show also complained about recent photos of Republic of Ireland football manager, Giovanni Trappatoni, pictured with bikini-clad models and the wide use of semi-naked models for photocalls.
