The recently appointed head of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO), Fleishman-Hillard Executive Vice President John Saunders, believes the PR industry needs to toughen up its ethics rules. ICCO is a global umbrella group for PR consultancies and their trade associations. Following the recent ICCO summit in Prague, Saunders told PR Week, "We need to devote more energy to ethics.

After the recent BlogOn 2005 conference in New York City, Burson-Marsteller's Lisa Poulson bemoaned the suspicion that bloggers have for corporations. "My overall impression is that the gap between where the blogosphere veterans are and where corporations are not only vast but also actually harmful," she told PR Week.