The Department of Tourism (DoT) was caught on the hop this week when it apparently forgot about the global nature of the information age.

It seems the DoT recently decided to sponsor a six-part television series in the UK entitled “The Ascent of Money” – the Cayman Islands’ first-ever TV sponsorship deal.

The series examines the dynamic role of money and financial institutions in world history and the first part aired on Monday of this week. The DoT will be the sponsor of all six hour-long programmes.

According to Don McDougall, the Regional Manager for the European office of the DoT - he agreed to sponsor the programme because “followers of the series present exactly the right profile and demographic of visitor who will want to book a holiday to the Cayman Islands.”

The DoT issued a press release to this effect, which they apparently mistakenly believed would be circulated only in the UK. No copy was released to the Cayman Islands media.

Predictably, however, the news immediately gained a far wider circulation and was picked up by Forbes magazine in New York, one of the world’s premier business publications.

Forbes published an article about the series and the Cayman Islands sponsorship thereof on Tuesday and, equally predictably, highlighted the irony of a programme that “claimed to unravel the mysteries behind the global financial crisis” being sponsored by the Cayman Islands, often perceived as being the evil tax haven villain of the current economic meltdown, and certainly one of the most convenient scapegoats for politicians everywhere.

It should therefore have come as no surprise that the article in question – which appears in part in our popular “Cayman Islands in the Foreign Press” column in today’s issue – was less than complimentary when it comes to the financial wheeling and dealing transacted through this jurisdiction.

Cayman is referred to as the place “where many large banks parked the toxic debt securities in the last few years before the credit crisis erupted, leading to huge write-downs, losses and now, layoffs,” thus neatly associating us with huge financial losses and unemployment.

According to Forbes, the sponsorship deal is worth “a six-figure” sum and quotes a DoT press release as their source of this information. However, no figure was mentioned in the version of the press release now provided to us by the DoT, so we cannot say for sure where Forbes got their figure.

And whether the “six-figure sum” was closer to 100,000 or 999,999, and whether in dollars or pounds sterling remains to be revealed, but the potential range for the expenditure in this respect is substantial – anywhere between US$100,000 and approximately US$1.5 million at current exchange rates.

Once again, whenever the Cayman Islands is mentioned in the context of questionable financial transactions, there are the usual references to “light-touch” and “lax” regulation and banking secrecy.

No doubt the government will respond with their usual mantra of “international standards” but, as we have said over and over again, either this message is not getting through or the much vaunted international standards are pretty ineffective when the chips are down, or perhaps both.

Interestingly, UK tax consultant Richard Murphy has something to say about the future outlook for the Cayman Islands, as quoted by Forbes, “These places actually have two choices. They either sell real financial services that can survive under the glare of transparency, or they find something else to do.”

In the meantime, the DoT is probably going to have to do some damage control in relation to the Forbes article – something that could have perhaps been avoided had they kept the local media in the loop.

Local news stories setting out the facts of the matter in the context intended by the government might have served to deflect the kind of article Forbes ended up publishing.

In the last 30 days, Cayman Net News web pages have been accessed over one million times and, if we add in our other regional websites, the total is approaching two million.

We know for a fact that our content is read by other news agencies and networks, including household names in New York, because they contact us when they need information. Similarly, our articles are read by heads of state, prime ministers, governors, secretaries general and other influential people in government and business. Again, we know this because we are in direct contact with them.

The sooner those that have a message to get out, whether in the public or private sector, stop treating the local media as an afterthought or as something to be manipulated instead of employed, the more successful they will be in getting the desired results.