D espite being continually included in lists of PR bloggers, I am not a PR practitioner.
I don’t know the first thing about PR (other than you buggers get paid a lot more than ‘internal comms’ folks), never having been involved in any theoretical study of it, or any practical outworking of the theories.
So when my PR mate Trevor Cook points me to a long and at times fractious series of comments to one of his posts I come to the post with eyes wide open.
In my eyes — the eyes of an internal communicator and online evangelist — PR as a profession is suffering a severe crisis of identity at the moment. There is much hand-wringing and name-calling going on, and the recent emergence of the Strumpgate phenomenon as a textual hand grenade has further exposed PR’s deep crisis.
‘Employee Comms’, as a philosophical entity and activity, may well be dead, or at least seriously ill, but I don’t recall a similar level of angst or ethics-led despair. Employee Comms folk are despairing, but that is of third parties — employers — not themselves.
And online communication zealots, of which I am also a card-carrying member, have never been more bouyant than at present, blog editor woes not withstanding.
What I found interesting in the comments on Trevor’s post (about the ethics of PR) was the overwhelming smell of bile emanating from the Strumpette. Now, irrespective of whether Dude is a Lady or not, the predominant thought I had when reading the Strump was, “if they hate the profession so much why do they stay in it or have anything to do with it?”
From a psychological perspective I am curious as to the reward that the Strump gets from their posts. It certainly can’t be a self-righteous belief that they are changing the nature of the profession — history shows that loud noises eventually become subsumed, much like people who live next to train lines eventually create scatomas to block the noise out of conscious processing.
The other thought I had was amusement that the three essays that Trevor points to as good examples of PR student work are not referenced at all, by any correspondent. Making me feel that a fight was being picked.
However, that said, the Strump makes a number of interesting, if slightly heated, assertions (as always) and Trevor and his guests Renai LeMay, a working journo from ZDNet Australia, and Phillip Young make interesting observations and arguments. As one commentator, AM Flynn, suggested, having the Strump take a ‘chill pill’ would probably have helped the conversation’s tone, but it was an interesting bun fight to watch/read. And all ended with smiles, so that’s all right, then.
My view, knowing — as I do — absolutely nothing about PR?
‘Ethics’ is a wonderful measuring stick to go by, but unfortunately available only to those of us who meet the following criteria:
- don’t have children’s mouths to feed
- don’t have mortgage payments to meet
- have omniescence regarding what is ‘truth’
- have rock-solid internal values regarding what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’
- see the world in ‘black’ and ‘white’
- have no feelings of fallability because they have never been wrong about anything
