Duty to tell the truth

‘Spin has become the ubiquitous term for public relations tactics.’ wrote David Miller and William Dinan in their book 'A Century of Spin: How Public Relations Became the Cutting Edge of Corporate Power' (2007). The current Public Relations industry is trying to drift from this opinion and blur the image of Public Relations being spinning and lying to the public. It is not easy to stop the stereotype that have grown since the first practitioners such as Edward Bernes and Basil Clarke.



Image by Jens Lumm

What makes it even harder is that current practitioners are admitting that lying is a part of the business. One of Britain’s most famous Public Relations practitioners Max Clifford often acknowledged that he lies on behalf of his clients. He happily admits: ‘I’ve been telling lies on behalf of people, businessmen, politicians and countries for 40 years. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it is. I’d rather be honest, but I cannot be all the time... All PROs at all levels lie through their teeth.’ Many practitioners are devastated by his words and are trying to challenge him in public debates. In 1994 he debated with Quentin Bell about the transparency of the industry and in February 2007 Clifford took part in the PRWeek debate ‘PR has a duty to tell the truth’, against morally and ethically strong personalities from the Public Relations industry such as Peter Crumpler. Max Clifford won the vote at the end of both debates. 

After the debate Peter Crumpler said that he was ‘dismayed and disappointed’ by the result and that this is a bad sign for the future of the industry. His opinion was supported by Simon Cohen, founder of ethical PR agency Global Tolerance.

At the same time, there are some positive voices behind Max Clifford openly expressing his actions. Daniel Rogers’ opinion of the debate that took place in 2007 was: ‘The fact that PR people admit they need to lie occasionally is a sign of growing honesty and confidence in what they do’.

He admitted that by having a debate on ethics in Public Relations, ,the  industry showed evidence of a new maturity. Rogers found optimism in Public Relations people admitting they needed to lie occasionally, which made it different from spinning, when practitioners tried to hide the truth .

Download podcast from PRWeek Ethics Debate 2007

Role of PR in war

A recent war that we had coverage of almost every day was the Iraq war. During our class at the University of Westminster we watched the movie titled ‘War Spin’, which is a part of a series called ‘Correspondent’ broadcast by the BBC and it shows what war looks like from a media relation point of view. This documentary helped me to understand how much PR is involved in war and how the military allows viewers to see only what they want to present.

The main thought taken from this movie is that the main PR strategy during the Iraq war and other conflicts was to control the source of information. The programme shows how the military manipulates the mainstream media using a few different techniques. One of the techniques during the Iraq war was to placed the journalists in the Central Command Centre in the building far away from the field of war and provide them with an army representative who would supply them with a series of unremarkable facts and information. The main idea behind this action is to limit the facts and context about the war by carefully controlling the topics which were chosen by military. This allowed military to deliver news to journalists on a daily basis in order to keep them interested. As a result the media shows what military wants them to show and stopped uncomfortable information and comments being revealed by different sources to the broadcaster.

The movie showed the importance and power of PR during a war. It demonstrates how spin is used in various ways during times of war and how hard journalists have to work during a military conflict in order to get the information that is carefully protected.

For more about media reporting during the Iraq war see: Iraq media section.

To see more about the manipulating the media during war: