I was browsing this week’s Congressional Quarterly [CQ] weekly newsletter when I came across this interesting article. You can rest assured that if I come across an article about public relations that mentions Tim Russert (may he rest in peace) and Barack Obama, I’m posting it.
I wonder if it is “ethical” of me to post this entire article? Good thing tomorrow is SCRIPPS DAY at Ohio University, where a host of topics will be discussed by several panels of notorious journalists, professors, and mass communication professionals. One such panel is being hosted by my professor of media ethics, Bernhard Debatin. His panel discussion is “Blogging: Are Individual Voices Enriching or Devaluing the Landscape?” and the keynote speaker is E.W. Scripps Company CEO and President Rich Boehneso, who will commemorate the 20th year of the E.W. Scripps/Ohio University relationship. Try to make it if you can!
The aforementioned article (thaaank youuuu Ohio University Libraries’ InfoTree!):
By Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff
Click here for the original article
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They are called flacks and spin doctors, and it’s usually not meant in a nice way. So it seemed a bit ironic last month when the Public Relations Society of America, which represents 32,000 PR people around the country, sent letters to the Obama and McCain campaigns urging them to avoid “innuendo, incomplete information, surrogate messaging and character attacks” between now and Election Day.
That irony is the point, says Jeffrey Julin, a Denver-based public relations executive who is chairman of the PR association.
“We understand that there are lots of people who think that public relations is spinning and manipulation of information,” he said. “We’re saying that’s not the kind of public relations we practice or promote. Messaging is an important thing to do, but in a respectful way that is accurate.”
Julin says he initially got the idea to challenge the campaigns last fall, when the now-deceased host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert, spoke at a society conference in Philadelphia and said that American voters deserve a “more respectful discourse” during election campaigns. The society then launched a networking group on the Facebook Web site called “Clean & Fair Campaign 2008,” which now has more than 2,200 members.
But earlier this year, when GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois promised a new kind of political campaign — and seemed quite sincere about it — Julin thought his plan to challenge them to conduct a more upright dialogue would prove unnecessary.
It didn’t turn out that way, though. Since the Republican and Democratic conventions this summer, Julin says, “We’ve slipped back into business as usual,” with both campaigns slinging charges only loosely tied to reality.
The society’s letters in August to the communications directors for the McCain and Obama campaigns, Jill Hazelbaker and Robert Gibbs respectively, challenge both to sign the society’s code of ethics, which commits members to the “highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent and in communicating with the public.”
As yet, Julin says, neither campaign has responded.
Zeller, Shawn. “PR Executives Challenge Candidates To Be Ethical.” CQ Weekly Online
(September 29, 2008): 2552-2552.
http://library.cqpress.com/cqweekly/weeklyreport110-000002963714
(accessed October 1, 2008).
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