So I visited the PRSA Web site as Mr. Yann suggested, and here is one of the more salient things I found:
"January 18, 2011
PRSA Objects to The Economist's Derisive Viewpoint of Public Relations' Value
PRSA submitted a letter to the editor of The Economist in response to a Dec. 16, 2010, article examining the growth of the public relations industry. PRSA strongly objected to The Economist's derisive viewpoint of public relations' value, and rebutted several points in the article that were either outdated or misinformed.
The letter to the editor was co-signed by John Paluszek, APR, Fellow PRSA, former PRSA chair and CEO, and current chair of the Global Alliance. ... Read More"
Which only serves to make my point about SIGNIFICANT media engagement.
Significant media engagement means that The Economist calls you when writing the story instead of talking to some 40-watt academic from Leeds and you write a three-paragraph "had you sought a more comprehensive viewpoint" letter that appears a month later and nobody reads.
The Economist never heard of PRSA and therefore never calls to get "a more comprehensive viewpoint." You have failed 32,000 members and an entire industry that began on these shores and propped up your sorry organization for more than 50 years.
I should not have to point this out to a VP of Public Relations, but Mr. Yann's cheeky reponse compels me to do so.
Not that I'm condoning the media's behavior - but could it be they are giving these 'right wing extremism' groups barely any attention out of fear or reprisal from said groups?
Or perhaps reporting on it is just not profitable? Most of the media in this country is owned by large conglomerates who span many continents, and whose driving goals are revenue and high stock prices for their shareholders. They in effect decide the news for the rest of us.
If both are somehow reasons (and of course I'm sure there are many more), how can we as a society be made 'aware of the existence, scale and severity of the problem', when our media fails us?
Timing is of the essence - for example I came upon this story two days after it was written, and more than a week after the incident occured (and I try hard to follow such stories).
I say that not as a criticism of PRWatch or CMD - I'm grateful for reading the story.
The only thing I can think of is developing an effective alternative media presence that dedicated to getting news to people, fostering open critical debate amongst society, and not beholden to the Establishment either now or ever?
Is that within CMD's charter? If not, should it be?
But who can do that?
yes, Fox is a right wing propogandist.
yes, much of the rest of the LSM are more interested in fueling a right/left food fight than informing the public. it's easier to make money by staging controversy and lighting that stage than it is to divine truth.
the purpose, and particularly here at CMD, et. al., should be to leapfrog the pedantic right/left diversion and start dealing directly with the treason of Plutocracy as it exists today.
this is about more than 5% of americans confiscating 95% of america's annual treasure every year, this is about a new world order of the money, by the money and for the money and the stakes are global.
google "wealth".
cross-check as many links as you need in order to satisfy yourself that, to paraphrase a former president, "It's the Plutocracy, stupid."
if i am wrong that controling interests are concentrated in an alarmingly few hands nationally and globally, please cite your source(s).
if, however, you agree, then it is time to speak out above the din, that is, above the considerable din of the right/left diversion.
money doesn't care who's in congress. or parliment. or the palace.
money cares about acquiring more money and nothing else, least of all people.
In response to the above comment titled "PRSA Responds" by Arthur Yann (above), Jack O'Dwyer submits the following:
------------------------------
My hat’s off to PR Watch for touching off this much-needed public discussion of PRSA practices.
Let’s take the most important parts of Mr. Yann’s letter first which deal with my claims that the Society keeps vital information from members, lacks democracy, and disregards basic Robert’s Rules while citing Robert’s as its parliamentary authority.
If the Society is so democratic, why was there a “Committee for a Democratic PRSA” last year that obtained 305 signatures on a petition and got 150 others who declined to reveal their names.
Heading the Committee were Richard Edelman, head of the world’s largest PR firm, and Art Stevens, former president of the New York chapter and holder of the Society’s coveted “Patrick Jackson Award” for outstanding service to the Society.
Basic democratic principles are that the electorate knows who their representatives are, what they say, and how they vote. This is not true at the Society where there is no published list of the nearly 300 Assembly delegates when there used to be.
Delegates are not even required to put their names on this list which is available only to other delegates and then only several weeks before the Assembly. Members may know their own chapter delegates but they also have to know all the delegates in case they want to express an opinion to them.
Members Need Voting Records
Members have a right to know how their delegates vote but the last time that happened was in 2004 when there was a roll call vote.
The Society says all members can go to the Assembly but it refuses to audiocast the Assembly which would be cheap and easy.
A transcript of the Assembly, in effect a “slow-motion replay of the Assembly,” had been available every year until 2005. It allowed reporters, PR professors, students of PR, members and others to carefully study what was said. It only cost about $1,000 to prepare. Refusing to supply this is a massive loss of information to the members.
Members, including PR professors, have asked for a PDF of the members’ directory which is useful both for them and students. A PDF would be cheap and easy to do. The Society, whose members bombard reporters with releases by every known means, wants to protect its members from being bombarded with sales pitches. In other words, members can dish it out but can’t take it. This is an absurd line of reasoning.
The Society is ignoring two instances of physical threats to me including one that was witnessed by a group of delegates including a national director, as an e-mail from Yann to me pointed out. There is no disputing that I was threatened with bodily harm. A director and probably Yann himself knows who this person is. So far the Society is refusing to investigate this but instead hurls one charge after another against me.
As for O’Dwyer reporters allegedly not covering some of the 2009 conference, we wrote a lengthy article about the discussion between Arianna Huffington and Wendell Potter.
No PRSA Rules Were Broken at Assembly
I did not break any of the rules for us at the 2010 Assembly since I was warned that doing that would result in O’Dwyer reporters being forever banned from the Assembly. I did not conduct an interview during the Assembly but interviewed Art Stevens during an afternoon break. I tried to get into the Assembly lunch, which I have attended at least 35 times, but was blocked by Yann. I needed to interview delegates about the defeat of the proposal to let non-APRs run for office.
This was not a wrongdoing of mine but of the Society. It blocked a reporter in performance of his duties.
I did not know I couldn’t take pictures of the Assembly meeting room even before the Assembly began and took a couple. I stopped when warned by Yann. My tape recorder went off by accident in play mode at the Assembly. I was not recording anything.
As for the charge that I am permanently mad at the Society, it is true that I won’t give up trying to get paid for the more than 50,000 copies of O’Dwyer articles that it sold without my permission. As I have said, it took the victims of the Nazis decades to collect from World War II atrocities. The Swiss did not start repaying the victims until the 1990s. The victims never gave up and neither will I.
The German Council of PR Firms says there is no statute of limitations on wrongdoing. The Society still owes me and many other authors compensation for the massive theft of our intellectual property.
i wanted to say i really respect what you have done but i have two questions that were never addressed
Why doesn't anyone ever report on the five largest health insurers, or holding
companies (A holding company is organized specifically to hold the stock of other
companies and ordinarily owns such a dominant interest in the other company or
companies that it can dictate policy) that control them, and the association called Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Blue Cross Blue Shield is an association that rents or sells its name to other insurance companies.
The five largest insurers are Aetna, Well Point, CIGNA, United Health Care, and Humana.
These companies control health insurance in our country through their subsidiaries.
One example; Well Point, our nation’s largest health insurer who owns Anthem Health Care, also owns another
corporation called Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, which is in fourteen different areas
or more, as well as they also own Unicare Health. These companies all sell the same or similar
products, with four boards of directors, four sets of administrators, four sets of
actuaries, four sets of attorneys, and even more. One group for each company. They also have
four sets of claims departments, four separate sets of stock holders, etc.... all needing to meet the
expectations of the parent company (Well Point) as well as Wall Street and their stockholders.
Don’t they only need one set not four different ones?
Let’s stop multiplying the effects of multiple administration costs.
Let’s bring healthcare cost down.
Let’s stop pseudo-monopolies.
For an example; why aren’t the companies owned by Well Point all called Well Point?
Let's stop them, the insurance companies, from competing against themselves.
Some even own the doctors as well as the medical facility you have to go to.
Where is the incentive to lower costs? Make them compete for our business.
There are 255 million customers, that should be a huge quantity dollar discount for the American
public with fair competition and the free market.
Insurance companies now charge us more (in premiums) and give us less (cutting
benefits). Doctors have complained for years about all the additional paperwork and the
high cost of malpractice insurance. In other words, they want Tort Reform to limit our ability
for compensation, wrongs, and harm done by the medical profession. (Tort is a system for compensating wrongs and harm done by
one party to another's person, property or other protected interests (e.g. reputation, under libel and slander laws).
This is all caused and set by the insurance industry.
They spread the expense of a few "bad" doctors over the entire medical field instead of
making the "bad" doctors be held accountable for his or her own actions.
Did you know insurance companies protect these "bad" doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, and so on, by keeping
attorneys on retainers just to protect them so that they don't have to pay claims (isn't their job to pay our, the American people's, claims)?
Insurance companies have caused the problem with doctors, their paperwork and patient denials.
Again, insurance companies now charge us more (in premiums) and give us less (cutting
benefits). Remember when businesses said they could not afford health insurance for their
employees? They had to lay people off and send jobs elsewhere.
Remember, insurance companies now charge us more (in premiums) and give us less (cutting
benefits). Patients have been blamed for being sick (it’s our fault for being sick. Insurance companies must have forgotten
that we pay our premiums for them to pay our claims. That is their job).
The insurance companies used to say "GOD forbid you got sick but thank GOD you have health insurance". Nowadays it's more like
"GOD forbid you get sick now you can’t afford health insurance".
Look at their own greed!
Who is more important to the insurance companies their stock holders or their customers?
Without their customers they would have no money to pay their stockholders or business!
Also, would someone please explain why no one seems to know that Medicare Advantage is not Medicare.
It is an insurance plan sold by the for-profit insurance companies that takes
money from the non-profit government Medicare Trust (that we have paid into) just to give to the for-profit
insurance companies which is called Medicare Advantage.
Then they (the for-profit insurance companies) charge you higher monthly premiums than
non-profit government Medicare, deductibles, and co pays.
MEDICARE ADVANTAGE IS NOT MEDICARE.
Medicare is a non-profit.
Let’s stop funding the for-profit Medicare Advantage from the non-profit government Medicare Trust.
Money was given to the for-profit insurance companies out of the Medicare Trust for
Medicare Advantage just to increase their bottom lines.
Let's use the funds from Medicare Trust to improve Medicare not fund Medicare Advantage.
Don’t forget, insurance companies still offer Medicare supplements to
cover what Medicare does not at a fraction of the cost.
Using the five major health insurers and not allowing them to own other insurance companies (which
has allowed them to compete against themselves instead of competing against each other)
would greatly improve our cost control and gain better quality care.
Finally, maybe we would have value for our dollar instead of our dollar for their value.
With 255 million potential customers we should have better quality and better pricing. Don't you think?
DON’T LET THE WOLVES IN SHEEPS CLOTHING PULL THE WOOL OVER OUR EYES!!!!!!
Michael G. Copeland
So I visited the PRSA Web site as Mr. Yann suggested, and here is one of the more salient things I found:
"January 18, 2011
PRSA Objects to The Economist's Derisive Viewpoint of Public Relations' Value
PRSA submitted a letter to the editor of The Economist in response to a Dec. 16, 2010, article examining the growth of the public relations industry. PRSA strongly objected to The Economist's derisive viewpoint of public relations' value, and rebutted several points in the article that were either outdated or misinformed.
The letter to the editor was co-signed by John Paluszek, APR, Fellow PRSA, former PRSA chair and CEO, and current chair of the Global Alliance. ... Read More"
Which only serves to make my point about SIGNIFICANT media engagement.
Significant media engagement means that The Economist calls you when writing the story instead of talking to some 40-watt academic from Leeds and you write a three-paragraph "had you sought a more comprehensive viewpoint" letter that appears a month later and nobody reads.
The Economist never heard of PRSA and therefore never calls to get "a more comprehensive viewpoint." You have failed 32,000 members and an entire industry that began on these shores and propped up your sorry organization for more than 50 years.
I should not have to point this out to a VP of Public Relations, but Mr. Yann's cheeky reponse compels me to do so.
In response to the above comment titled "PRSA Responds" by Arthur Yann (above), Jack O'Dwyer submits the following:
------------------------------
My hat’s off to PR Watch for touching off this much-needed public discussion of PRSA practices.
Let’s take the most important parts of Mr. Yann’s letter first which deal with my claims that the Society keeps vital information from members, lacks democracy, and disregards basic Robert’s Rules while citing Robert’s as its parliamentary authority.
If the Society is so democratic, why was there a “Committee for a Democratic PRSA” last year that obtained 305 signatures on a petition and got 150 others who declined to reveal their names.
Heading the Committee were Richard Edelman, head of the world’s largest PR firm, and Art Stevens, former president of the New York chapter and holder of the Society’s coveted “Patrick Jackson Award” for outstanding service to the Society.
Basic democratic principles are that the electorate knows who their representatives are, what they say, and how they vote. This is not true at the Society where there is no published list of the nearly 300 Assembly delegates when there used to be.
Delegates are not even required to put their names on this list which is available only to other delegates and then only several weeks before the Assembly. Members may know their own chapter delegates but they also have to know all the delegates in case they want to express an opinion to them.
Members Need Voting Records
Members have a right to know how their delegates vote but the last time that happened was in 2004 when there was a roll call vote.
The Society says all members can go to the Assembly but it refuses to audiocast the Assembly which would be cheap and easy.
A transcript of the Assembly, in effect a “slow-motion replay of the Assembly,” had been available every year until 2005. It allowed reporters, PR professors, students of PR, members and others to carefully study what was said. It only cost about $1,000 to prepare. Refusing to supply this is a massive loss of information to the members.
Members, including PR professors, have asked for a PDF of the members’ directory which is useful both for them and students. A PDF would be cheap and easy to do. The Society, whose members bombard reporters with releases by every known means, wants to protect its members from being bombarded with sales pitches. In other words, members can dish it out but can’t take it. This is an absurd line of reasoning.
The Society is ignoring two instances of physical threats to me including one that was witnessed by a group of delegates including a national director, as an e-mail from Yann to me pointed out. There is no disputing that I was threatened with bodily harm. A director and probably Yann himself knows who this person is. So far the Society is refusing to investigate this but instead hurls one charge after another against me.
As for O’Dwyer reporters allegedly not covering some of the 2009 conference, we wrote a lengthy article about the discussion between Arianna Huffington and Wendell Potter.
No PRSA Rules Were Broken at Assembly
I did not break any of the rules for us at the 2010 Assembly since I was warned that doing that would result in O’Dwyer reporters being forever banned from the Assembly. I did not conduct an interview during the Assembly but interviewed Art Stevens during an afternoon break. I tried to get into the Assembly lunch, which I have attended at least 35 times, but was blocked by Yann. I needed to interview delegates about the defeat of the proposal to let non-APRs run for office.
This was not a wrongdoing of mine but of the Society. It blocked a reporter in performance of his duties.
I did not know I couldn’t take pictures of the Assembly meeting room even before the Assembly began and took a couple. I stopped when warned by Yann. My tape recorder went off by accident in play mode at the Assembly. I was not recording anything.
As for the charge that I am permanently mad at the Society, it is true that I won’t give up trying to get paid for the more than 50,000 copies of O’Dwyer articles that it sold without my permission. As I have said, it took the victims of the Nazis decades to collect from World War II atrocities. The Swiss did not start repaying the victims until the 1990s. The victims never gave up and neither will I.
The German Council of PR Firms says there is no statute of limitations on wrongdoing. The Society still owes me and many other authors compensation for the massive theft of our intellectual property.
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