Lo and behold, into our lap falls an internal Dublin Airport Authority presentation by external communications manager Siobhan Moore. It touts the DAA's new gettough policy on journalists, building on what Moore claims was a "significant improvement in treatment of DAA in media in 2006".

The DAA measured this improvement as a reduction of letters to the editor complaining about Dublin Airport, from 15 in 2005 to four in 2006. It's a novel approach to measurement, to be sure, but we were really impressed that Moore also boasts of invitations to appear, "personally", on the radio shows of Ryan Tubridy and George Hook -- "as a direct result of tackling them head on in emails regarding negative comments they made on their show about DAP" [Dublin Airport].

On slide four, "Communications Focus", Moore reveals the DAA's plans for future PR success.

"Targeting every untruth in the media, assess and respond accordingly, " seems fair enough, but we wonder about the next bullet point. "Tactically divert attention from potentially negative stories."

The previous slide notes that DAA got positive media coverage for its handling of the two bomb scare evacuations in 2006, plus the fallout from UK terrorist activities in August of last year. We can only speculate about what some of the 'tactical diversions' from negative stories might look like.

We did ask airport communications supremo Vincent Wall what a 'tactical diversion' from a negative story would look like. "You have a document that you're not meant to have, so we'll be making no further comment, " was all he would say.

A few slides later, Moore's presentation warns that the DAA will take some criticism if they think it is fair, but. . . "we'll come after you when it isn't! !"

Publius is on more enemies lists than even Richard Nixon could keep track of at this point, so we're not all that worried, but the next time we fly we'll park in the non-DAA owned carpark and check under the car before we start it. Just in case.

IMUS IN THE MOURNING One way to divert attention from a negative story might be, say, if an elected official had a car wreck, as happened to the governor of New Jersey. Gov Jon Corzine was critically injured in a car crash on his way to a meeting at Rutgers University between that school's women's basketball team and radio shock jock Don Imus, turning farce into tragedy.

Imus, a staple of New York talk radio for decades, was fired last week from his radio show after referring to the same basketball team as a bunch of "nappy-headed hos". The shocking use of the racial slur - most of the Rutgers squad are black - was at first ignored but when posted on a website by a media monitoring pressure group sparked a mounting wave of protests that saw sponsors desert - first from cable network MSNBC, which had a TV simulcast of the radio show, and finally from Imus' home station, WFAN.

A salutary lesson to broadcasters everywhere that comments which once may have been forgotten can now easily be forever reused as easily as newspapers. And no way to claim you were misquoted.