Professional etiquette

If there is one thing I detest more than chasing copy from reticent contributors, it is being taken for an idiot. Silly I may be, stupid I am not.
Recently I was rung by a woman who introduced herself as Miss X from Australian publishing giant ACP. In the initial call, Miss X asked for a meeting in six days time but did not explain the purpose of the meeting.
With blank pages to fill and time as scarce as a free seat in an Akira show, I duly noted the appointment in my diary and continued with my day. Later that night I began thinking about my impending meeting and wondering what the scope of it would be due to the fact said media organisation boasted several fashion titles of its own.
I received numerous emails and calls from Miss X who always began the conversation by announcing her name as "[Miss X] from ACP". At one point she even said she intended bringing me up to speed with "stuff happening" within the organisation.
In one of the final emails sent to me prior to our meeting Miss X mentioned she would be bringing a woman with her - a representative of a new label to Australia. It was at this point, the penny dropped. This had nothing to do with ACP and everything to do with Miss X wanting to generate publicity for her mate's label by using her employer as a tie-in.
Aware this is an all too common practice among some unscrupulous members of our industry, I attended the meeting anyway.
Once pleasantries had been exchanged, Miss X's mate duly began spruiking her "new" label while Miss X listened patiently. I will not generate more free publicity for her by repeating the name of the label here.
At this point I turned to Miss X and asked her what her employer had to do with the launch of the said brand. Her response: "Nothing actually, I'm just a big fan of the label." Her mate added (somewhat unnecessarily): "Miss X just did me a huge favour." I would be interested to know what other labels ACP is wittingly or unwittingly lending its support to.
To make matters worse, said mate then proceeded to tell me all about the label's official launch - held among much fanfare in Darling Harbour - some weeks earlier. Without even the slightest hint of irony, she spoke of all the press that had been generated as a result of the launch and produced the accompanying reports for my perusal.
Being a fortnightly publication, we are not always in a position to beat the dailies to stories happening within the rag trade. But like all media organisations we take great pride in ensuring our copy is always fresh and relevant. We also go to great pains to ensure that the stories readers view in our magazine have not already appeared elsewhere.
For this reason, I find the above behaviour really hard to swallow.
Not only do I find it insulting they would turn to us only once everyone else had taken a bite of the cherry but worse still, they did so believing they needed to use the ACP tie-in, during ACP time, to buffer the deal.
At best it is unethical. At worse, deceiving.
I'm all for the promotion of new labels, in fact I love nothing better than hearing about someone who is doing something new and different. But don't insult me, my publication, or its readers by attempting to flog off an old story as a new one. More importantly, don't engage in unscrupulous means to secure free publicity. Allow your label to stand on its own merit and let potential buyers themselves determine its true value.