In the political firestorm that engulfs the United States, one side claims the other has no principles, whilst the other claims their opponents show a slavish devotion to ossified beliefs that make no sense in modern America. Moral relativism, one side’s rhetoric goes, has brought our society to the brink of destruction. Outmoded thinking, the other side’s speaking points read, has made our country a cruel, Darwinist dystopia, where “survival of the fittest” is played out in policy. For some reason, the ongoing debate of tea parties and new Fascism makes me think about public relations.
The collapse of centralization of news and the growth of social media is fueling a similar decamping in our profession. On one side, those who believe that social media is an incarnation of evil, bent on destroying the concept of objectivity and authoritative sources, not to mention the homicide of the public relations industry. On another side (there are more than two), those who see social media as the democratization of information and the dissolution of concentrated media power, elevating ordinary people and adding to the diversity of voices in the media mix.
The ethical questions percolating for me these days relate to our role as PR people in participating in social media. In the sense of the “Excellence Theory,” social media should represent the triumph of two-way, symmetrical communication; active engagement of organizations and their stakeholders, seeking mutual benefit. But it seems to me that organizational participation in social media is still largely an asymmetrical game of persuasion, of message sending rather than dialogue. Marketers dominate the conversation online, devaluing PR objectives regarding reputation in favor of metrics focusing on revenue generation. Organizations continue to struggle to find applications for social media inside the enterprise (speaking broadly here; fully aware there are exceptions), as despite efforts to embrace openness and multi-directional communication, command and control is difficult to release.
The dilemma for practitioners is especially acute for agencies and suppliers, and the ad value equivalency debate is an example. AVE has been discredited for years, but is still in common use because many clients demand it. They understand it, and AVE provides a shorthand description that they find useful. The Institute for PR Measurement Commission recently condemned the practice, with one member writing that just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s right. When a client pays an agency and asks for AVE, we should say “no,” goes that argument. But the fear is that, “If I don’t give them AVE, they’ll go find someone who will.”
On the social media side, should all organizations use social media? What is our ethical responsibility here? I’d be hard pressed to say that everyone should embrace social media. I cannot make that claim, that is, if I care about giving good advice to my client. It’s not much different than telling a client reflexively that they need an intranet, or a newsletter, or a video. I need to understand the client’s objectives before I jump to tactics.
That doesn’t even address the more serious ethical challenges represented by social media.
Look at the Astroturfing issues, from fake blogs to agency staff commenting on client products. Is the free market of ideas and caveat emptor sufficient to rein in those who have no compunction about engaging in such tactics?
I have always been an idealist with respect to media, seeing the years between Edward R. Murrow and Watergate as the pinnacle of journalism, heroic reporters, courageous editors and committed publishers digging for The Truth, all with peerless ethical grounding. The disappearance of even the pretext of objectivity in journalism (reaching its zenith — or nadir — with MSNBC/Fox News/The Washington Post/New York Times) has disgusted me, even as I admit that objectivity was a goal, not a reality according to my own journalism professors. We could aspire to objectivity and embrace fairness, something few media outlets now even attempt, at least by my crude measure.
Certainly the outright failure of the trust equation (media, government, business all suffer), should be laid bare here. One must evaluate the media’s biases and objectives, and caveat emptor reigns there, as well.
People determined to do wrong will find a way if their personal ethical compass permits. Maybe that’s the scariest part of all of this. We’re relying on individuals to manage their own ethics in a time when ethics are subjective, not objective, and right and wrong are relative concepts.
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So many great points raised, so little time to respond, but with more than 140 characters at my disposal I’ll give it a whirl.
I think that the division of roles and responsibilities between people in PR, Marketing, and Communications has been fading since the last recession forced downsizing and the combining of duties. The rise of online tools has simply finished it off completely.
It isn’t simply a devaluing of PR objectives as you suggest, but rather a complete blurring of the roles, and hence of the organization itself. Once we stopped hugging each other over the joy of social media and we had finished singing Kumbaya, reality set in. No one will pay me to play online unless I can show a tangible benefit that somehow supports the business model. Throw in another recession and I’m sorry kids, but either produce results, or find another branch to tweet from.
Caveat emptor has always been part of the media equation AND of the marketing equation. We just happen to have tools that can helps us come to a conclusion much faster now.
Being a journalist or owning a media outlet comes with responsibilities, rules, regulations, and the realization that you do it for a living (disclosure: I’m a seasoned journalist and media manager turned communication director ).
Firing up social media has few responsibilities, rules or regulations, requires no business licence, communications department approval, or committment to any standards in advertising. There is always the risk of reputation damage admittedly, but for the most part if it doesn’t work out you can make it disappear with minimal fuss.
Media for all its failings has some requirement to be objective. It is what makes it media. Social media is inherently subjective – that’s what makes it social media. People who read anything, from anyone, anywhere, have to make a judgement call. Problem is so many don’t bother.
Finally a tidbit from many, years ago when the web was only just developing a graphical interface. A group of us spread around
North America saw a great social value in the ‘net and a great commercial value. We proposed Web 1 and Web 2. W 1 for our group hugs and open exchange of ideas, and W 2 for coporate involvement. That was 16 or so years ago.
Look how far we’ve come.
Mike, thanks so much for your thoughtful comment. I am mightily relieved that the sense of objectivity is “still” considered to be a part of being the media. In Bernard Goldberg’s excellent book, “Bias,” he talks about when he took CBS (his employer for 20-odd years) to task for its deliberate lack of objectivity. For his trouble, he was marginalized and finally shown the door. When he wrote Bias, Fox News offered him a job and he said NO, seeing Fox as a continuation of the problem of bias, not a solution. We continue to add mainstream and new media voices that have their bias worn upon their sleeves.
As to the organizational confluence of marketing and PR, we can look at the integrated marketing communications movement as exhibit A for the prosecution. I used to work with a company where all communication functions (save Investor Relations) reported to Marketing. As a consequence, all our communications were (wait for it) MARKETING. Features and Benefits.
This is backward. All marketing is a form of communications, but not all communication can be marketing. This is especially true in an age of increasing skepticism of marketing in general. PR’s move to product publicity (let alone mid-20th Century press agentry), the source of good billing hours and excellent corporate jobs, can generate revenue at much lower cost than advertising. Marketing, however, cannot produce the reputational improvement that PR can, at virtually any cost. Brand advertising simply leverages reputation; it cannot rebuild it.
Employees can use social media to share information amongst themselves, interact with clients and prospects, and otherwise act as reputational warriors. Clients can interact with each other and employees to deepen their understanding of the company and its products, and buy product. B2B interactions can uncover improvement opportunities, share best practices, etc. All of this is true, provided all of these people trust one another to be smart, authentic, factual and free of hidden agendas.
In which facet of human interaction are we all four of those things?