The Fork in the Road

"How serious is it for PR that the man who runs the foremost center for press and public policy in the US is fundamentally skeptical about our profession?" asks Richard Edelman, CEO of the Edelman PR firm. On his blog, Edelman reports on comments by Alex Jones of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center at a recent gathering of the PR Seminar, a rather secretive annual gathering of top PR executives. Jones said that news is moving away from objectivity, as "subjectivity, finding underserved markets, ideologically targeted, is a viable business strategy." The result is that we are "fast approaching a time of relative truths, resulting in an even more toxic partisan environment." Jones lamented the cheapening of news, saying that "media with reduced staff is looking for packaged content. The temptation will be high for PR people to do in print what has been done in video news releases." Edelman calls Jones' remarks a "very important speech" and calls on PR pros to "to recognize that with our enhanced opportunity comes a very real responsibility" to "be more credible" and adopt a policy of "total transparency." Maybe they should start by lifting the veil of secrecy that has shrouded PR Seminar events for more than half a century.