Purposely Misleading or Purposely Mislead?
It’s on us to check the facts
The Public Relations industry is under threat. I’m not referring to the mass adoption of AI as there’s always some great tech advancement. When I started out in this industry, we barely used email, and the fax machine was our best bud. Granted, they were fancy, with pre-programmed numbers for all the news and picture desks, and a lyrical dial up sound to rival Daft Punk.
The real threat comes from within. We’re witnessing a coup, where lies and misleading ‘news’ are the currency for many ‘PR pros’.
The real PR professionals understand the importance of trust and transparency in our work. Anyone who has had to sit through a Harris PR agency introduction will have heard me harp on relentlessly about integrity, transparency and the integral role we play in representing the facts.
But we’re seeing a trend in the opposite direction; of purposely misleading the media, and in turn the consumer, for nefarious gains.
You’d have to be living under a rock to have missed the Baldoni/Lively drama resulting from their ‘It Ends With Us’, well, drama. Baldoni hired crisis management expert Melissa Nathan, who had previously represented Johnny Depp, and a ‘hired gun’ Jed Wallace to create an alleged strategic smear campaign against Lively. What emerged in transcripts was the worst part of our industry – a calculated campaign aimed to destroy a career. The facts were immaterial; the lies were orchestrated and the negative campaign against Lively over-shadowed any negative news around Baldoni. Careers were destroyed. When this emerged, people started to question the role of PR, crisis management and digital strategies – who could they trust?
More recently, The Drum revealed that global communications company Havas subcontracted global marketing agency Stagwell to conduct research for the Israeli government, surveying 13,000 people across Europe and the US to gauge knowledge and attitudes towards Israel, recommending emotional storytelling, terrorism-related messaging and links to Islamic radicalism to boost Israel’s image. By playing on people’s emotions and fear, spin-campaigns lead to confusion, more distrust and outright lack of understanding of what is really happening in Palestine.
Closer to home again, it emerged over the weekend that a new restaurant that opened in Dublin city centre had its connection to a French bistro of the same name misrepresented, whether by mistake, or otherwise. A little more research from leading restaurant guide website, All The Food revealed that this was not the first, or even the second occasion that connections had been made to more famous establishments from this group, resulting in top publications such as The Irish Times and Irish Independent, editing and even removing related stories. All The Food begged the question why more journalists had not questioned the content of the press release and done their own research. A great point, if you’re in the US, or even the UK but in Ireland, I firmly believe the PR industry has built long-lasting, deep and trusted relationships with journalists, leading them to accept the information presented to them from PR agencies.
It’s on us, the PR agencies, to establish the facts. It’s the 101 of PR. All PR courses, including Diplomas from the PRII and Masters from TUD cover off the importance of trust and transparency. It’s not new news. It comes down to the importance of the brief.
Trust works all ways, when the client completes the brief, we expect them to present the facts. We have to establish a relationship with them based on trust. We take that trust, and shape and mould the strategy before operating on their behalf.
Our world is small in Ireland, PR and Journalism is so connected, it’s often a pathway from one industry to the other. As a former journalist, and current PR professional, my circle of friends is largely comprised of journalists – heck I even married one.
In this vastly digital age, human connections have never been more important. Let’s do our very best to safeguard that, trust me, it will be worth it.
– Sonia Harris Pope, Founder & Managing Director, Harris PR