ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the nature of the relationships which pattern the interaction between union press officers and their external environment. The importance of making contacts think they are on the inside track’ was one of the tricks of the trade employed by a number of press officers. It recognised the labour correspondents’ appetite for ‘intelligence’, or information which allowed ‘informed judgements’ to be made about future developments and likely scenarios, and it depended upon the cultivation of a ‘shared intimacy’, through which offi-record material and snippets of information could be exchanged. A similar process could be detected in much of the interaction between correspondents and union press officers. Accurate information, advance ‘intelligence’ or a position on the ‘inside track’, and access to senior officials, were the ‘bargaining chips’ which experienced press officers tried to employ in their ‘exchange relations’ with correspondents.
