Is Transparency the Key to Improving PR’s Reputation?
Posted by Administrator on September 21st, 2005
By Elizabeth Albrycht, Blogging Planet | CorporatePR
EDITORS’ CHOICE | Transparency & Ethics
In early September, I started kicking around an idea related to the ethical practice of public relations: that truth and transparency are two very different things, and in that difference lies great potential for taking steps to improve the practice of public relations, resulting in a more positive public reputation. I wrote:
Let’s repeat: “Transparency is the opposite of privacy.” Of course, you can’t say that about truth, which drives home the difference between truth and transparency. Truth doesn’t require that “all information…is open and freely available.” It only requires that the information that is presented is honest and accurate. And that gap between the information that is presented and making all information available is the one that PR practitioners have fallen into, tarred with the label of “unethical.”
The conflation of truth and transparency is therefore a problem. While I welcome the increased awareness of ethical practices as a good thing, until we start focusing on the important changes that the increasing demand for transparency is bringing to PR practice, I fear that little will change in terms of the currently dismal reputation of PR.
I posted this idea in a few places, seeking comments. One commenter nailed it down for me. Jim Durban wrote, “The difference for me is truth is about facts, and transparency is about the process.” He wrote in about 10 words what I had not been able to get at with hundreds! Thinking about transparency as a process opens up an entire field of inquiry for public relations professionals to examine how we do our jobs in the face of expanded public scrutiny.
I have been asked several times over the past year how things have changed ethics-wise given the growth of the blogosphere. My response generally runs something like this:
Let’s face it; most people have no idea about how PR is really practiced, but plenty of opinions on how terrible and dishonest it is. Now they have a platform for proclaiming their opinions (the blog), and their audience is sucking them up. There is something mystical, almost voodoo-like, in the psychological roots of persuasion, and laypeople don’t like the idea that they are being “subliminally” (if not outright) manipulated. Furthermore, there is a general sense that we PR people weasel out of or stick with only the bare minimum of ethical practice.
Taking me up on my request for feedback, Eric Bergman of Present With Ease offered me an example of how a standard practice stumbles in the face of transparency. His excellent article, “The Ethics of Not Answering” from the September-October 2005 Communications World (available via subscription only) picks apart the practice of media training and exposes its ethical weaknesses. In an email to me, he wrote, “In other words, the concept of staying “on message” and not answering the questions directly - even though the information given after the question is asked (i.e. key messages) is true — cannot by definition be transparent.” His article concludes that while not answering might sometimes fit the minimum ethical guidelines provided by associations like PRSA and IABC, we probably want to seek a higher standard. I would agree, especially if we want to help improve the reputation of PR.
So, let’s agree that the bare minimum of compliance to ethical standards just doesn’t cut it. By focusing on our processes and comparing them to our stated ethics, we are sure to uncover better ways of conducting our business.
Another key process that PR people have begun to examine for transparency is media relations. Now, in many cases, journalists have dragged us to this examination via public embarrassment, but some of us are starting to figure out what transparency means during the process. (This past spring, David Berlind began his Media Transparency Channel to start a conversation about journalist-PR transparency. He hasn’t posted to it in awhile, but there are a number of interesting examples there.) The common theme emerging in this arena is the frightening degree of sheer incompetence of people who call themselves PR professionals, but clearly aren’t professional in the slightest. Public humiliation is certainly one tactic to use to scare these people away! In fact, I believe a greater degree of transparency, up to and including publishing transcripts of interviews and pitches, is something that can both improve our practice and provide protection for all of the parties involved from claims of dishonesty, incompetence, etc.
Clearly, it is easy to claim “we have to be transparent!” but it is much more difficult to put guidelines in place for practicing it. We need to understand what it means for media training, conducting interviews and pitching journalists. We need to create transparency guidelines for ghost writing, speech writing and VNRs. We need to answer the questions about what transparency means for community relations and how it will fit into Sarbanes-Oxley rules. In fact, every activity that we undertake as public relations people should be examined. (I think the upcoming book Naked Conversations, in which authors Robert Scoble and Shel Israel explored the issue of transparently writing a book — via its blog –about transparent corporate marketing/communications, will be a good resource for the industry.)
On a side note, I believe the quest for transparency has special implications for PR agencies as well, given that agency personnel have usually tried to remain in the background. This becomes tricky in a transparent world, which requires disclosure, not only of existing ties, but how those ties function in reality (the process). I’d love to hear what you think about that.
I believe that the vast majority of PR practitioners are not dishonest. Most of us try to live by accepted ethical guidelines. However, we are increasingly being forced into situations where we are guilty until proven innocent. Transparency may just give us the ability to prove our innocence, thus improving the reputation of PR as a whole.
About the author
Elizabeth Albrycht is a 15-year veteran of high technology public relations practice and co-founder and co-producer of the New Communications Forum, a conference series designed to bring journalists and marketing and PR professionals together to learn how to use participatory communications tools. She has authored articles on blogging, RSS and other new tools for PRSA’s Tactics magazine, the IABC’s CW Bulletin, and the Future of Work eNewsletter, and has presented teleseminars and in-person seminars on new communications tools for PRSA. She is a member of the Future of Work, PRSA and the IAOC, and an alliance partner at Blogging Planet. She blogs at CorporatePR and is the editor of Future Tense, a Corante blog that explores the future of work.
{tags: prblogweek, pr, public+relations, ethics, transparency, blogging, corporate+blogging}
September 21st, 2005 at 11:11 pm
I’ve been looking forward to reading this piece Elizabeth. I had reservations about your original premise, that truth and transparency were different things, in that it could lead to a logical (but preposterous) conclusion, that it is Ok not to tell the truth as long as careful trackback can iconfirm that you were open about your intention. I agree that Jim Durban is spot on with his analysis, but I still hold that the key distinction lies in purpose; when PR acknowledges its role as being one of advocacy it can claim ethical coherence, but when it tries to to reach for a moral higher ground, when it seeks to replace advoacy with a supposedly neutral (and supposedly more acceptable) role of communication facilitator, that is when PR slips into the dangerous groung where it can be portrayed as less than honest.
September 26th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
That gap “between the information that is presented and making all information available� may have labeled pr practitioners unethical, but it also gave them the job. And just because you’re labeled as such doesn’t mean you have to be. Transparency is about the process, but truth will fall into transparency at some point.
It sounds so good to think that complete honesty is the key, but in essence you’re just asking for humans to end human nature. No one wants to proudly show off their inadequacies and faults to the world. It is our nature to cover things like that up. Not to mention, by asking for transparency you request that not only all PR practices be ethical, but also all business practices. If transparency is your end goal, then your clients will have to be able, and willing, to be transparent as well.
Transparency is the opposite of privacy, as you said, but is that what PR really needs? A relentless vomiting of every action that takes place. This would make simple tasks hard to get through and give the feeling of walking on egg shells the entire time to ensure that every detail has been made available for the public. It might be easier, and more feasible, to shoot for honesty.
It’s part of the PR code to accurately represent, to be truthful, and I fully agree that I think most practitioners are honest. It would seem to me, that just like in any profession, you who are good at your PR jobs would want the liars removed from the business. Maybe just keep doing your job right and let those who are giving the bad name take the responsibility.
Sounds like there is much public relations work to do for public relations itself.
September 27th, 2005 at 9:40 am
Phil - I would certainly say that both truth and transparency are necessary conditions for ethical PR practice, but neither, in and of themselves, are sufficient. You need both (and other things as well, which ethical codes like PRSA’s tries to define). Without truth you would certainly fall into that position you describe where as long as I tell you what I am doing there is nothing wrong with the action. Or to put it another way, as long as I keep describing/acknowledging the means, then the means are justified as well as the end, which we know is not always the case.
I also agree that the demand for position (advocacy) has to be addressed. What are the ethics of persuasion? As PR people, we state that our purpose is to persuade, and we therefore pick and choose the information we present to our target audiences based on that purpose. To be ethical, in my mind, that information has to be true, and the picking and choosing transparent. But how transparent?
Ashley brings up a good point here - if we “vomit” up every debate in every decision the resulting information glut could destroy any chance of persuasion we have, and therefore our purpose disappears.
Our goal needs to be to find the equilibrium point in the process of transparency. How much disclosure is enough? What information needs to be disclosed? How much of the process needs to be shared? These are the questions we need to devote ourselves to answering.
September 27th, 2005 at 6:19 pm
I am interested that you home in on the ‘ethics of persuasion’ - I think understanding and acknowledging that this is what PR does is vital but it is also something with which practitioners - and those who seek to define what the PR profession claims to do - are reluctant to engage. It is, as you say, linked to notions of advocacy. One of the reasons that I keep returning to notions of advocacy is that unlike the PRSA code) it is a word that does not feature at all in the UK’s Chartered Institute of Public Relations Code of Conduct. I think it should! (But then again, there’s part of me which thinks PR should reclaim the word propaganda…).