Inside PR 549: When PR People Do Bad Things

OK. Before you get defensive, I want make something clear right from the start: We are NOT saying all PR people are evil.

Far from it.

In fact, most of us are simply trying to do the best jobs we can for our organizations or clients and behave in an honest and ethical manner.

But let’s just say, there are some less than scrupulous individuals and companies whose approach and choices reflect badly on the industry.

And it’s not just PR pros who are guilty of this. Certain bloggers, journalists, media outlets and influencers are also not as honest or transparent as they could be when it comes to conflicts of interest.

And because social media has given us all a voice, we need to make sure we think through the consequeneces of how we use it.

That’s what we talk about for this week’s podcast.

We got the idea from a Washington Post story about a site that bills itself as an investigative blog. Turns out, it has financial ties to a PR firm and seems to focus on stories where the agency’s clients have a vested interest.

In our opinion, this contravenes many PR codes of ethics and standards including PRSA, CPRS and the Global Alliance to name a few.

Have a listen and let us know what you think.

And if you want to dig deeper, check out Gini’s Spin Sucks post on the subject.

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It’s your turn

We’d love to hear what you think and if you have any subjects you’d like us to cover in upcoming episodes.

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Thank you to the people behind Inside PR

Our producer is Jacob Waxman, a talented musician, producer, and recording engineer. Jacob produced the episode and is also the composer of our new theme music. Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR 548: What I want isn’t important. It’s about what you want by Joseph Thornley, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.