Now why would a PR firm do this?

Germany's economy ministry has fired its public relations company, saying the firm offered to buy advertising space in a newspaper in return for the paper running stories on ministry policy.

The brief news item about this is available here, courtesy of The Toronto Star.

Their reasons for this pay for play scheme might have been:

1. They can't really influence the media the old-fashioned way anymore, although this sort of thing has been going on for years;

2. They are billing a huge retainer and getting no results via traditional means, although this has been going on for years;

3. They are seriously ethically-challenged, although this has been a widespread problem in the PR industry for years.

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