PRSA drawn into Scott McLellan’s tell-all book
There has been a lot of talk about former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s book –a lot of it political. But the PR fallout came as an attack on the PRSA by CBS News’ Andrew Cohen (“The flak over flacks…“) last week.
Among the many attacks on PR:
“You can’t build a profession based a deceit and spin, then create “ethics” rules that call for honesty, and then criticize McClellan.”
And:
“Show me a PR person who is “accurate” and “truthful,” and I’ll show you a PR person who is unemployed.”
PRSA fired back with a press release, and a video response to what they call a scathing and unwarranted attack. They take down Mr. Cohen’s argument point by point:
“For public relations professionals, engaging diverse and often skeptical audiences requires top-flight skills in communications, creativity and even persuasion, but a trust once lost cannot be regained. Unemployment, contrary to your opinion, is reserved for the professional who has lost his or her credibility.”
Some like Gary Weiss have begun to scrutinize the code of ethics of the PRSA.
Neville Hobson commenting on the incident noted the irony that the criticism of the PR industry was being leveled by someone representing the legal profession.
What do you think?
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Comments
June 10th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
No, all PR people aren’t liars. But PRSA exposed the profession to even more ridicule by exaggerating its integrity in response to an exaggeration about its deceitfulness.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:09 am
I agree that PRSA’s response was a little much. The way I see it, McClellan saw an opportunity to make a few bucks and did it. There’s bad or unethical people in every profession. I wonder if he was a PRSA member, just out of curiosity. I don’t know anything about his background.