David Rickey, VP of public relations at insurance and financial services firm Alfa Corp. (Montgomery, Ala.), usually distributes at least one video news release (VNR) a
month on agricultural issues, making sure to include a suggested lead-in identifying the source as well as an on-screen identifier naming the speaker as a corporate officer of the
client.
"We think people should know exactly the source of this material," says Rickey. That statement seems obvious, but it isn't. The dilemma of unidentified VNRs or VNRs put forth
as original editorial content is one of several ethical hot-button issues facing PR execs today, driven, in part, by the Armstrong Williams-U.S. Department of Education-
Ketchum scandal earlier this year (PR News, Jan. 26).
VNRs, long a staple of the PR profession, sometimes fall into a gray area: Do we know the source of our "news?" Who paid for it?
With public attention growing, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) earlier this year made clear the ground rules. To wit, VNRs must identify to TV stations
"the source of the video, for whom it was produced and [must avoid] the narrator's use of the word 'reporting,'" PRSA President-CEO Judith Phair wrote in a letter to the
organization's 20,000-plus members.
Observers say continuing fallout from the Wall Street scandals has upped the ante on truth-telling -- the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as the adage goes. "I find that
I am explaining things more carefully," says Douglas Fenichel, regional director of PR and communications for K. Hovnanian Homes (Edison, N.J.) as well as immediate past
chair of the ethics committee for the New Jersey PRSA chapter.
"The other day, we were sitting in a meeting with some reporters. One person gave them a semi-straight answer, and I looked at this person and then came back with an answer
that was more true," Fenichel adds. It turned out later that the information was supposed to be kept quiet per the boss' orders, "but I knew those reporters were going to leave
there and call these other people," in which case the secret would be revealed and Fenichel's reputation would suffer as a result.
Disclosure and sourcing go hand in hand. If you're telling a story in a straightforward manner, you can't hesitate to say who the source is. "If the truth is coming from Ida
Amin or Armstrong Williams, it does not matter, as long as it is the truth," says George Stenitzer, VP of corporate communications at Tellabs (Naperville, Ill.).
At Tellabs, any executive who may need to talk to the press receives both ethics training and media training. "The core of that training is always, always, always be honest.
From a practical purpose, it gives you less to remember. Just. Tell. The. Truth," Stenitzer says.
In order to tell the truth, you have to know the truth, and the new focus on clarity in PR has changed the way Stenitzer does business internally. Before he talks to the
media, he grills his colleagues and pulls together everyone even remotely associated with a piece of work. He then picks apart their stories, just as a skeptical journalist would
do.
"In a major project, six or 10 people may be working on it, and each of them has a piece of the truth," he says. "You want to have all those multiple sources giving you
different viewpoints so that you can arrive at a truth that is relevant across all of those different areas."
If your common-sense antenna quivers, cross-examine your client before the media gets hold of him or her. Play devil's advocate, says Scott Sobel, VP of Washington, D.C.-based
Levick Strategic Communications. "These days, I am more and more the person who has to ask blunt questions."
It's not just a matter of getting the entire picture; this internal exploration is incumbent upon the PR executive, who will be the public face of whatever good or ill the
corporation incurs. "As a public-relations professional, as the keeper of the corporate reputation, you need to be the person asking those questions," Alfa Corp.'s Rickey says.
"You are uniquely qualified to understand how the public is going to perceive these issues."
And even if the corporation is behaving entirely on the up-and-up, the fallout from Wall Street's ethical misdeeds can't help but have an impact on public relations, a
profession historically perceived as being ethically challenged. In addition to playing it straight, however, corporate PR execs also are sealing their lips in order to shield
themselves and the corporation from mouthing management claims that may be less than accurate.
"There are times when I am working with material that talks about our financials or what is going to happen in the future," Fenichel says. "I get asked all the time how many
homes we sell in the State of New Jersey, and we don't break that out separately. We used to, but now we don't want to be talking about specific things that have not been
disclosed already."
The ethics rules du jour: Disclose the source. Tell the truth. Grill your colleagues. Know when to say less. On the other hand, don't let the world forget that this is a
shared responsibility.
"News organizations don't have the resources to get every picture. It's okay for them to use VNRs, and my job it to get the information to them," Stenitzer says, adding that
some of the responsibility of disclosure also falls on broadcasters that run VNRs.
Even as one worries about the public side, there are in-house ethics matters of which PR pros must be cognizant. Case in point: Fleishman-Hillard, which last summer was
in hot water after former employees charged that the agency had told them to falsify billings to the City of Los Angeles.
The agency later distributed a memo reminding staff members about their ethical obligations to clients -- and to the agency. But with some of the biggest PR agencies getting
tripped up by ethical lapses, it is easy to see how the profession as a whole runs the risk of being tarred with the brush of ethical foul play. All the more reason, observers
say, to make sure everything said to stakeholders remains aboveboard.
Contacts: Douglas Fenichel, 732.623.6979, [email protected]; Nick Ravo, 561.866.6950, [email protected]; David Rickey, 334.613.4034, [email protected]; Scott Sobel, 202.973.1324, [email protected]; George Stenitzer, 630.798.3800, [email protected]
'Check Your Conscience'
If a cloud of suspicion hangs over PR these days - Who's paying off broadcasters? Who failed to tell us about Enron? - it should hardly come as a surprise.
Simply put, "It is easier to lie to the press today," says Nick Ravo, professor of media studies at Lynn University (Boca Raton, Fla.). "The public has less respect for the
press. They don't see the press as being unbiased or without its own agenda. So it's not like you are lying to a priest. You are lying to someone who potentially is trying to hurt
your company."
And that makes it okay? Well, it's how your check your conscience. But in a highly pressurized environment (not to mention the economic realities), Ravo says he can understand
how some PR professionals can sometimes go astray.
"Most people are pragmatists," Ravo says. "If you as a 24-year-old PR person making $35,000 a year and trying to live in Manhattan or Brooklyn, and you have to make a snap
judgment as to whether to lie to a reporter or tell the truth and possibly get fired, that is not going to be a hard decision."