Regolamentare le rp: parola di Edelman

Sul blog di Edelman per la prima volta un grande imprenditore delle rp propone la regolamentazione (licensing) delle professione (anche se in forma sfumata e limitata alle sole agenzie)?Riportimao l'articolo di Richard Edelman qui sotto:Enough AlreadyAnother wonderful morning reading about the sleazy behavior of a so-called PR firm paying off a journalist to write favorably about a client. The stories in USA Today and the NY Times describe a pay-for-play arrangement organized by PR firm The Lewis Group with journalist Audry Lewis, a freelance journalist who received $10,000 for articles contributed to the Birmingham Times about former HealthSouth Richard Scrushy, on trial for defrauding investors. The Associated Press also reports that the Lewis Group paid a local pastor, Rev. Herman Henderson, to "help bring fellow black preachers into the courtroom in a bid to sway the mostly black jury in Scrushy's favor." A further complication--the PR firm is headed by Jesse Lewis Sr., founder of the Birmingham Times newspaper, whose editor is his son, James Lewis. To top it off, Charles Russell, described by the NY Times as a "prominent Denver based crisis communications consultant" working with Mr. Scrushy, also provided compensation ($2,500) to the journalist, for what Russell said was "freelance community relations work."This sleazy arrangement was somewhat comically described by the editor, James Lewis, in the New York Times. He claims not to have known that the reporter was being paid, considering her a "community contributor" who was a classic citizen journalist. "Had I known the young lady was being paid by somebody, I'd have called Richard Scrushy and told him he could have bought an ad for a lot less money."Isn't that exactly the point? Our business is being dragged down by an erosion of the hard and fast line between advertising and public relations. We don't buy space and we don't pay off journalists. We don't engage in murky relationships that are positioned with such code words as "doing community relations work."On top of the Birmingham scandal comes the very important Wall Street Journal column written by Daniel Henninger in which he questions Oprah Winfrey's continued support of memoirist James Frey, whose book "A Million Little Pieces" has been proven "false and faulty." Oprah Winfrey subsequently explained that underlined themes are more important than factual accuracy.Henninger goes on to quote Morris Dickstein of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, who describes the world of newspaper photos improved by computer program, the rise of interpretive news, the nightly news that puts more emotion than fact into events such as Hurricane Katrina. Dickstein says, "This world is always at the edge of falsehood so people come to tolerate it as part of the overall media buzz of their lives."Sorry, I think that this is a deadly trap for our profession and for all marketers and companies we serve. We cannot be seen to be corruptors of the media. Nor can we be complicit in the schemes seen as enhancement of news product, such as tampering with images. If the ad folks want to put Coke cans into old TV shows, so be it. But there must be a distinction between entertainment and news.After the pay-for-play scandals of the past year, whether in Birmingham, Washington or Iraq, we have to go further to prevent future misbehavior. I am calling for the key associations in the PR business around the world to consider licensing PR firms in their countries to do business. We have, for example, the APR accreditation process from the PR Society of America. That effort to assure professional standards of practice is fine as far as it goes.But we need to go further, to have CEOs of PR firms sign onto a code of proper behavior, that forbids payments to reporters, that mandates transparency on arrangements with third party experts and that bars a media company from having a licensed PR firm in the family. These standards must be enforceable, with the group given power to expel transgressors, then to demand a public apology and remanding of questionable earnings to the aggrieved client. I will attend the February 5 board meeting of PRSA and make this proposal. Can others who are similarly outraged and frustrated please help me with the wording of such a resolution, so that we have the means to protect our precious profession. Thanks as always.