Financial PR agencies are not meant to criticise the journalists who pay their wages. After all, if the journalists don't like them, they don't use them, and if they don't use them, they have to start smoking Hamlets rather than Hoyo de Monterreys.




But in the interests of a quality and democratic media, someone has got to speak out about some of the poor standards in the personal finance media. And as someone who spends a lot of time dealing with these guys and gals, it may as well be me.

Now don't get me wrong — the majority of personal finance journalists are great: they're intelligent, extremely knowledgeable about their sector, devoted to what they do and generally sound as a pound.




But then there are some personal finance journalists who aren't up to scratch — and who really shouldn't be let loose with a pen. I'd like to think I can say this with a degree of authority having been a financial hack in the past myself — won a few journalism prizes (yawn), enjoyed a lot of corporate hospitality (bonjour).

It's not just me saying this, either. I know at least two senior personal finance editors — been round the houses, crazy enough to still be there — who think the same thing. Standards have dropped. It ain't what it was.




The other day I wrote a little piece on how
can be the worst perpetrators of shoddy financial advice there is. It seemed to strike a chord with IFAs, and it's definitely something that needs to be addressed. But something else I find equally painful when reading the personal finance pages is this:




I feel almost embarrassed when I read some articles, which are just a string of quotes from the same old rent-a-gobs linked together. In reality, of course, I know the answer to this and I've addressed it elsewhere in a piece on the whys and wherefores of
.




Financial pr agencies, I'll say it again, are not meant to have a go at financial journalists. They're meant to fall into line. But as someone who works closely with the personal finance media I would like to see a) greater caution when articles are written in a way that could easily be construed as advice, and b) greater diversity, i.e. making a call to a firm that may never have been even in a local paper before — and sharing the love!