Communication Ammo, by Sean Williams

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.