Logan Rice
There have been
many stories where a PR Professional handles a situation poorly. They lie, or
cheat or play the blame game. Public
relations can be known as the dark side of journalism. Some people have a
common misconception that all public relations professionals do whatever they
can to please their client. This is not the case, most ethical public relations
professionals handle controversial or sensitive issues that their client is
involved in well.
PR VS. Journalism
Public relations professionals do more
than put together a media kit or write a press release. Journalism
and PR might be seen as two sides of the same coin. When Googling public relations,
a UNCP
website came up and said, “One side has news it wants to get out and the other side
needs news to cover. It can be a symbiotic relationship.” I think that this is
a very accurate statement.
Credibility
Public relations professionals do not
always do the right thing. According
to the McLaughlin article “when situations get sticky stakeholders go looking
for accountability, they blame those at the top,” even if they are not
credible.
In fact, there
is an entire website pertaining to public relations disasters. Although public
relations professionals may not always do the right thing for that particular
situation they are dealing with, most of them correct their mistakes, or go out
of there way to fix it. One participant in the Bulldog Reporter noted that "I can't
afford to lose my credibility … As PR professionals, it's all we have. And if I
lose my credibility here, it's not like I can just go start over with someone
else, somewhere else."
Accountability
Somebody has to take the blame and
there are factors that can cause even honest and decent people to break the rules, such as intense pressure by management to reach unrealistic goals or targets,
demands that they must consistently beat the competition, management’s
willingness to overlook small but persistent breaches of policy or ethics if
the employee gets results, and the fear of job loss or internal competitive
disadvantage.
There are situations where people
can’t reasonably hold management accountable for moral or legal breaches by an
employee. This is the case when a single employee or small group goes outside the
company’s clearly established boundaries and norms, according to the PRSA
piece.
Trust
Photo Credit: enjoylifefoodsblog.com
It
is important to trust your public relations professional. Your reputation is
ultimately in their hands. If a crisis were to happen to your company, you
would want somebody that you trust to handle that situation. If the public
relations professional that you trust has questionable history with how they
handled their other client’s crisis, you may want to consider getting a new
one. You both have to be on the same page with how to handle a problem, so you
can take the best approach to it and hopefully succeed. Make sure that your
public relations professional is credible, trustworthy and honest, if they aren’t
you may find yourself with another scandal on your hands.
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