Will Pro pros be liars, defenders or a conscience?
One of PR’s biggest challenges is finding the balance between what an organization or your clients want you to do and say…and what’s right.
That was never so clear this week as several major news stories collided, making me wonder whether PR professionals are forced to spend too much time being liars or defenders instead of building relationships, enhancing reputations and crafting communications programs that contribute to the bottom line?
I guess it comes with the territory but consider these recent news stories:
WikiLeaks Stalks Corporate America: How Companies Can Prepare? [Fast Company]
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Wants To Spill Your Corporate Secrets [Forbes]
A Former Insider Switches Policies [Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune]
Potter Asks Help of Leaders for PR Ethics [O’Dwyer’s]
CFTC Refers Forged Comment Letters to Justice Department [Bloomberg News]
In Fake CFTC Letters, an Arkansas Connection [New York Times Deal Book]
Greenpeace Sues Chemical Makers, Alleging Spy Effort [New York Times]
On Google, All Publicity Is No Longer Good Publicity [Online Journalism Blog]
Why PR People Get Paid and You Don’t [Mom Blog Magazine]
WikiLeaks’ high profile disclosures of hundreds of thousands of confidential government documents painted an embarrassing picture of US government intelligence and operations at home and abroad.
Former CIGNA insurance PR executive Wendell Potter spoke widely and passionately about unfair insurance industry practices and efforts to discredit healthcare reform. His new book Deadly Spin
In another major story, a Boston PR agency and its contractors in Arkansas were caught in a firestorm of controversy about blatantly forged letters sent to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
Also this week, Greenpeace sued Dow Chemical and alleged spying by another large US PR firm and security contractors to try and discredit the environmental organization.
An online store, DecorMyEyes.com, boasted about gaming Google news rankings by purposely delivering poor customer service to generate negative news stories. This resulted in higher page rankings and higher sales. Google quickly moved to change its algorithm to discount the impact of similar activities in the future.
Even the article in Mom Blog Magazine (above) reflects a poor attitude towards mom bloggers by its anonymous PR consultant/author. It’s ironic that the blog would accept this post.
All in all, it felt like a discouraging week or even a massive PR Fail for some ethical PR practitioners.
It’s one thing for senior management to say “We’ll just bring in PR to clean it up!” after poor safety and environmental practices lead to crises; to run an insurance or Wall Street investment empire that operates without a moral compass; to encourage discriminatory lending practices; or to hire a bunch of PR “professionals” to spy on activists or forge representations to a Federal commission.
It’s quite another situation for an unnamed US financial group to face the prospect of a WikiLeaks tsunami because of documents leaked by whistle-blowing employees. This is extremely serious business of crisis proportions and no doubt banking PR executives are preparing for the worst.
Obviously, poor business practices, criminal activity or the lack of ethics are not the fault of “public relations.” But as Enron showed, knowledge of those activities and the effort to cover them up is definitely not part of the PR job description.
If there’s a good outcome to the WikiLeaks developments, it is surely that government and business ethics and actions will be under closer scrutiny by the public in the future. Coffee break conversations will definitely be more animated and interesting in the months ahead.
But many are also wondering who’s responsible for ensuring that WikiLeaks is above board and accountable in all of its dealings? Can we trust them when new disclosures are leaked?
It’s certainly a week for reflection on the core values of the PR profession and whether we’re prepared to uphold them as professionals?
One thing’s for sure. PR professionals have their work cut out for them. The scramble will be on to get ready to respond to the next anticipated WikiLeaks disclosures.
The big question then is will we be liars, defenders or the public conscience for our organizations?
Photo credit: Icky Pic via Flickr
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Keith, good to hear your view on this week’s news. Agree that while it felt negative, there’s no question PR has a critical role in reputation building as well as crisis management. That still doesn’t take away from the questionable actions of some PR agencies. The issue may be better answered by the Council of Public Relations Firms whose third of eight principles reads: “Encourage and promote the highest ethical behavior.” Interesting that there is a Code of Ethics but no process for enforcement, regulation or for someone to bring forward concerns. PR pros will be watching with interest. Appreciate your comments!
Hi Alex, enjoyed your post. You’re right, we need to avoid the culture of spin. Interesting that it’s a global phenom as well. Good to hear from you.
Good post. I blogged about this very thing this week, citing comments from Institute of Public Relations Malaysia president Datuk Mohd Hamdan Adnan, who said: “Among the negative activities of certain media practitioners are spin doctoring, flacking, astroturfing, opponent defining and fronting. All these can threaten peace and order in the country.”
If you’d care to read it: http://www.alexgpr.com/2010/11/good-not-evil/
While taken as a whole, news from this week (which kept us very busy at PRSA!) of allegations of unethical practices and other spurious actions within public relations and marketing could be seen as discouraging or an affront to the ethical practice of public relations, I think what this week’s news shows more than anything the evolving role that PR is having in the business community and the increasing value and importance of strong, proactive and ethical practices.
What you saw in this week’s news, in a way, is actually a good thing: it’s the media’s ability to quickly flesh out unethical practices that we all know have no place in the profession. And while it may be difficult for us, as PR professionals, to read about this, it’s also good to see the quick and appropriate response that organizations like Dewey Square Group in Boston took to apologize and atone for their actions (http://ht.ly/3jHij).
And the pending (supposedly) attack from WikiLeaks on corporations should actually place even great focus on the strategic business value of public relations. Corporate reputation management is likely to be one of the biggest challenges for CEOs in 2011, and effectively utilizing a company’s PR and corporate communications teams will be paramount for executives to manage some of the reputational and trust issues that are sure to come their way.
Hopefully, this week’s news also proves to be a wake-up call for those practitioners who are not engaging in those most ethical of practices, or within established standards of best practices. A wake-up call that the public, the media, watchdog groups (such as WikiLeaks) and our profession are closely watching how we, as a profession, transparently and ethically communicate with our audiences and how we help our clients and employers enhance and build strong corporate reputations that are built upon trust with the public.
Keith Trivitt
Associate Director of Public Relations
Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)
http://www.prsa.org/
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