Awful PR for the Public Relations Society of America [1]
Submitted by Anne Landman [2] on
Jack O'Dwyer, who publishes a newsletter [3] that follows the public relations [4] industry, reports that he and his staffers were blocked from entering an assembly of the Public Relations Society of America [5] (PRSA). PRSA officials demanded O'Dwyer pay $3,825 in registration fees to enter and report on the conference, while journalists from similar organizations, like PR News and PR Newser, were let in free. Arthur Yann, PRSA's Vice President of Public Relations, said that O'Dwyer and his staffers had to pay because people fromĀ O'Dwyer's newsletter "attended last year's conference but never wrote about it." But O'Dwyer did in fact write [6] about the 2009 conference. O'Dwyer also reports other harassment while attempting to attend the conference, like getting an anonymous letter in which the writer threatened to beat him "to a pulp," and being set upon by a flash-mob while he was conducting an interview. O'Dwyer has criticized PRSA for withholding transcripts of their organizational assemblies over the last five years, concealing the names of their delegates and refusing to make available a PDF version of their members' directory. O'Dwyer has also exposed [7] techniques now in wide use by big PR firms that violate PR ethics, like working through front groups [8] and creating and disseminating fake news [9].