Global PR Blog Week 2.0

By Philip Young, University of Sunderland | Mediations
EDITORS’ CHOICE | Transparency & Ethics

Blogging brings into sharp focus some of the key concerns of ethical Public Relations. It is easy to decry fake blogs, astro-turfing and other dubious techniques where the intention is clearly to deceive and the practices are undeniably unethical but it is important to recognise the challenges facing blog evangelists who strive for honest, transparent and open dialogue.

It is useful to separate notions of ethical PR into two strands, which I have defined as transactional ethics, concerned with the business dimension of PR (paying bills on time, client confidentiality relationships etc) and diffractional ethics, which considers ways in which PR messages are transmitted and interpreted.

My interest is primarily in the ethics of diffraction, with promotion, manipulation or suppression of truthful or untruthful messages. This can be examined in relation to ‘transparency’, usually seen as a good thing, and concerned with the mechanics of delivery, attribution and openness, but also in relation to fundamental conceptions of what PR is considered to be, either a representational or promotional discipline that is akin to advocacy or a communication tool that strives for an (idealised) notion of neutral two-way transfers of information.

Drawing on correspondence with Trevor Cook, of Corporate Engagement, and discussions with Chris Rushton of the University of Sunderland, I would suggest blogs can be categorised as either:

• About me: people who write about their daily lives for micro-audiences of friends and family;
• Focused interests (niche/ hobbyists): people who use blogs to communicate with fellow enthusiasts/ with shared experience ie workplace. Usually amateurs and generally recreational.
• Campaigning: Political blogs, pressure group, protests
• Networking/ Education/ Development: people who use blogs to debate professional subjects with fellow practitioners
• Personal marketing: people who use blogging to promote their expertise to clients, employers and others who can influence their careers or businesses.
• Commercial: organizations which use blogs to promote goods and services, (including news organisations)
  • Can include employee blogs (moderated)
  • Can include blogs that encourage customer participation (e.g. Nokia)

Interestingly, it is possible for a PR practitioner to be involved in almost all these types of activity. The difficulty for those examining blog ethics lies with the perception that what is ethical conduct may differ depending on the type of blog being authored.

For all but the commercials, Cook observes, blogging is a communications medium that has its roots, and parallels, in the letter, the telephone and the newsletter rather than the newspaper, magazine or radio programme. Generally the most successful blogs are niche publications - focused on interests rather than broad range of topics based on newspaper-style demographics. But at some point the discourse breaks out of the two-dimensional relationships of interpersonal correspondences into the terrain of mass communications. The ’stories’ gain a wider appeal. They become journalism, or at least they forefront material that can be the subject for traditional (professional?) journalism, which for a PR practitioner, suggests crossing an important divide.

Certainly, businesses and organisations need guidelines on blogging, from setting out guidance on who can and can’t blog, what subjects can be covered, what tone is considered appropriate and, where the line should be drawn between the opinion of a private individual and what is appropriate for an employee . Again, this is not strictly an ethical concern, but it is beginning to be possible to argue that organisations may have a duty of care to provide such guidance.

Much debate centres on the importance of labelling, of clearly identifying who is saying what on whose behalf and for what purpose, perhaps even adhering to a set of standards that merits a kitemark (a halo?) but apart from the obvious practical difficulties of launching and administering such a scheme, there is a real danger that no-one could live up to the brief.

This is a tricky area, not least in distinguishing what might be considered an official blog. My own blog, Mediations, focuses on journalism, public relations and media ethics, the subjects I teach at the University of Sunderland - but it is not an official Sunderland blog, and I neither hide nor promote the connection. I would say it is a ‘legitimate’ blog - certainly not a ‘fake blog’ - but guidelines that would clearly distinguish one from the other are hard to delineate. Certainly it falls into the category of self-promotion, but is it semi-official?

If I write on the merits of studying for a PR degree is it unbiased? I comment on the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, but I teach on a degree that sells itself in part on its CIPR accreditation. Should I make this more explicit? Should it carry some sort of health warning?

But I am not always positive about the University, nor about the CIPR, nor even PR itself for that matter, and would strongly champion my right to academic freedom if ever I were to be challenged for my opinions or on its content. I could, I suppose, characterise it as a ‘warts and all’ blog, but I would have to concede the warts are carefully selected, as I intend to develop my career at Sunderland and am determined to increase the number and quality of the students we attract. Mediations strives to be ‘honest and truthful’, but would never claim to tell the whole truth.

Such tensions go with the territory in a university, but perhaps not so elsewhere. Undeniably, with the possible exception of the very smallest businesses or organisations, there is always going to be the potential for differences between the corporate view and objectives and those of the individual blogger (some would argue this is precisely why these blogs are worth reading). Indeed, the increased potential for such divergences to be made public is one of the factors that helps build the case that blogging has brought a new dimension to public relations. Before the advent of blogs this might well be expressed in conversations, in news columns or interviews, but few businesses could engage in a continuous narrative that was open to public scrutiny.

Developing ideas through the platform of a blog brings duties and obligations to the parent organisation, especially if it involves questioning objectives/ performance. The content will naturally be limited, shaped and recast, whether through benign self-censorship or draconian corporate intervention; this is not a bad thing, but it is certainly not an open dialogue and the ethical practitioner should recognise it as such. You choose what you blog about, and even if you position yourself as giving warts and all, it is you who chooses the warts.

So the model for understanding this dialogue is based on PR as advocacy not transparency; it plays up the good, it plays down the bad, and more importantly, if the bad is there, it is put there deliberately to create a good impression.

What about authorship? Newspapers have columnists who write behind a pseudonym. CEOs have speech writers, star columnists are often ghost written. Is it inherently unethical for a blog to be cast in the name of one employee but written by another? Anyone working in media relation spends a reasonable amount of time making up quotes to put into the mouth of a senior executive. OK, they may well be signed off by the person who is supposed to be saying them (but not always) but they are not an authentic voice. Again is there something inherently different between a made up quote - which says what the person meant - and a ghosted blog? Probably not, but it doesn’t feel right, does it?

Even if the CEO-blogger does write the stuff him or herself, should postings be proof read, copy edited, spelling mistakes eradicated, awkward constructions recast, sound bites included?

If the intention is truly to be a transparent, open dialogue between a named individual and the public, surely the answer should be no. But anyone who has worked in PR at any level knows any number of first-class business operators who should not be allowed before a keyboard without strict parental supervision.

So, in many (most?) cases, the PR department will suggest that a writer or editor plays some role in the process. Should an ethical, transparent blog carry a health warning, acknowledging that it was ‘based on an interview with Jane Smith’ or ‘edited by Philip Young, an account executive for Acme PR’? This is not going to happen, but at the point the content ceases to be what it purports to be, the thoughts of a named individual and becomes an endorsed corporate statement, leading to the further question, ‘Can a business have a blog?’ Some would argue that there is something inherent to a blog that demands it is an individual expression.

And anyway, are fake blogs always such a bad thing? Perhaps the PR client is a magician - surely there would be nothing wrong in creating the impression that the performance is indeed magic! Of course, this is entertainment, which is rather different. And promoting a magician is the job of a publicist not a PR practitioner so the role is not comparable. Which leads on to a whole other debate entirely…

Conclusion

It may well be the case that blogging offers PR an opportunity to move further towards openness and transparency, but these laudable concepts remain aspirational goals and not achievable ends, so don’t claim them as such.

The most useful ethical yardstick is “would you be happy if your action became public knowledge?” If so, get on with it. But if the answer is no, the chances are your intended conduct is to some degree questionable and you need to think carefully before proceeding.

Creating a ‘clean’ blog is like acknowledging Corporate Social Responsibility; it is not necessarily a virtuous act in that its motivation is without self interest, rather it is a good behaviour that has the welcome side effect of helping to make the world a better place.

About the author

Philip Young is senior lecturer in journalism and public relations at the University of Sunderland, in the North East of England. He specialises in media ethics and is currently writing a book on ethics in PR practice. He has run the Mediations weblog since April 2004.

{tags: prblogweek, pr, public+relations, pr+bloggers, ethics, transparency, blogging, corporate+blogging}