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There’s been yet another brouhaha about ethics in PR, and rightly so. A staffer at one of Wal*Mart’s public affairs firms got it terribly wrong, posing as a reporter at a “closed” press conference given by a union. And smarter folks than I have weighed in.
(Since first publishing this blog, I learned that Wal*Mart fired the public affairs firmed involved.)
Said staffer has since been removed. But it got me thinking about what the agency might have done to prevent this, which certainly would have been in the firm’s and their client’s best interests. Of course one would hope that a PR professional, at any level, knows that pretending to be someone one isn’t, particularly a member of the media, is wrong no matter how you slice it. But what had the firm done to inform its staff of the ethical standards it requires each employee to follow?
Which got me to the bigger question: Are PR firms doing enough to prevent this kind of ethical nightmare?
[Great advice for PR agencies from Ken Jacobs - JD]
