PR-Bridge

An interesting article appeared yesterday on the Adweek Web site discussing “Wiki sleuthing.” Writer (and Assistant Professor at American University) Wendy Melillo examines ideas of branding and persuasion from the persective of “a practicing journalist who now teaches strategic communications to university students.” She focuses on how new technology, such as sites like WikiScanner,  enable users to see who has edited Wiki entries.

The findings are not good for communicators:

“Someone with an e-mail address at Wal-Mart changed ‘Wages at Wal-Mart are about 20 percent less than other retail stores’ to ‘The average wage at Wal-Mart is almost double the federal minimum wage.’ A person traced back to PepsiCo removed several paragraphs about the health effects of drinking the soda. A State Farm IP address deleted references to lawsuits related to Hurricane Katrina.”

At the heart of Melillo’s article is that public relations/communications professionals make poor ethical choices. “The problem doesn’t lie with the public relations profession itself,” she says. ”It happens when some PR practitioners come to believe, either from their experiences in classrooms or corporate offices, that the little white lies and twisting of facts are acceptable ways to do business and get ahead. Numerous examples—from RadioShack CEO David Edmondson who lost his job after lying on his resume, to the case of former MIT admissions dean Marilee Jones. who claimed to hold three degrees she never earned—prove that deceit never pays.”

The idealist part of my thinking wants to believe that in a society as large as ours, these kinds of ethical dilemmas are bound to occur. And, that they take place in many professions, not just communications. A different part of me, however, perhaps more of a realist, remembers these kinds of slips being taken for granted in the business world…a continual blurring of ethical boundaries in the name of branding or reputation.

In some cases there is a disconnect between what students are taught about ethics and what then happens in the professional world. I know this overly generalizes and calls into question the fantastic work done by hundreds of thousands of communicators each day. The high profile cases, though, add to the collective bad name of the public relations industry.

What do we do about this? Yet again…another issue that needs addressed by scholars and professionals.