Rosen, Ketchum and the failure of PR bloggers

Let me say at the outset that I think Rosen's criticisms of the (general lack) of interest PR bloggers have shown in the Ketchum story are valid and important.

Initially, I also thought what the hell what do I care about a bit of a scandal in the USA.  Its a local american thing. Ketchum doesn't even have a presence in Australia, so there's not even the prospect of a hit on a feared rival to tantalise my interest.

But this is a pretty parochial approach, especially given that I helped organise globalprblogweek last year, which is partly premised on the idea that we do have common interests across national markets.

In fact its worse than this, I admit that the Ketchum story hadn't even registered on my radar until I received Jay Rosen's email this morning (Australian time).

Which is strange because we had a major scandal along these lines a few years ago in Australia.

Dubbed the 'cash for comment' scandal, it involved payments to powerful radio broadcasters to, allegedly, make favourable on-air remarks about some of Australia's biggest corporations.

The scandal got incredible high-profile publicity and has become an icon in Australian political and media life.

See for instance, this interesting exchange at a Senate estimates hearing with a representative from Telstra, themajority-owned Australian telecommunications company:

Bill Scales: Telstra doesn’t involve itself in cash for comment.

Senator Mackay: So would you regard Telstra’s deals with Alan Jones and John Laws as cash for comment?

Bill Scales: No, we do not Senator…
-Senate Estimates Committee, May 25 2004    

Despite the publicity and public inquiries the disappointing thing is that little was done.

Some, largely unworkable and ineffective, disclosure rules were put in place but you get the sense that life goes on pretty much as it has in the past.

My firm - Jackson Wells Morris - has long advocated for stronger controls over the industry. In fact, we resigned from the Public Relations Institute of Australia because we thought it wasn't being rigorous or tough enough on self-regulation.

The particular issue at that time was astro-turfing. We have a code of ethics and the watchword there is transparency. Our firm does not make political donations, of any sort. Though quite a few of us are active politically in a private capacity. Nor would we ever make undisclosed payments to public advocates.

Nevertheless, the problem is that unethical practices affect the PR industry overall and something should be done.

Government regulation is not desirable - though it may become inevitable if there are too many scandals.

Effective self-regulation by industry bodies seems a forlorn hope.

So, maybe we should turn to blogging to focus attention on the practices that give our industry a bad reputation.

But, I'm not quite sure how that would work.

Would PR people attacking each other look just like an attempt to snare some shred of additional competitive advantage?

Still, Rosen's article is a wake-up call, I think, and I hope it prompts more vigilance on the part of PR bloggers everywhere.

Follow the debate: Jeremy Popper, technorati watch on ketchum, PR Fuel, Dan Gillmor, Steve Rubel, Tom Murphy, Shel Holtz

(interestingly, Tom and Shel actually did post about the ketchum affair before the Rosen article but Rosen's research didn't pick it up - I think that shows that you can't rely on services like Technorati in Rosen's case to pick up everything. Just because its not on Technorati doesn't mean it didn't happen.)

PS - Dave Sifry, head of Technorati, commented here - "Interesting! I'm passing this on to our engineers to see why Technorati didn't catch those posts. We'll get that fixed right up. ;-)"

Comments

[Jeremy]

Nicely said, Trevor.

[Neville Hobson]

Like you, Trevor, I'd initially seen this as very much a US issue, in my view yet another case of US business ethics taking a nose dive.

But it's not. Far from it - it's an issue that is signficant for the PR profession as a whole.

I've posted comentary as well. What I'm interested in seeing in particular is what our professional associations have to say.

[Alice Marshall]

I also commented on the Ketchum debacle, as did CanuckFlack and Jim Horton. Rosen's search skills could use improvement.

In any case I am guessing there are more shoes to drop-
http://www.slaughter.house.gov/HoR/Louise/News/Press+Releases+By+Date/2005+Press+Releases/01.11.05.htm

[Octavio Isaac Rojas Orduña]

I bellieve that big scandals (like this one) could lead to big trouble for the PR industry as a whole (ana I am writing from Spain!).

Specially, when crisis like this one just raise another situations locally. Which means, it is not an isolated case and we have to stand against such practices.