CHAPTER 2

Is Public Relations Inherently Unethical?

Edward Bernays is widely considered the “father of public relations,” but his daughter Anne feels few sisterly impulses toward the trade. “Public Relations has got to be the longest four-letter word of the 20th century,” she has written. “I see it as a powerful and often useful device but one far more like a gun than a hammer.” She considers public relations people “the tireless, not to say somewhat paranoid, guardians of our economic, financial and social status quo.” She notes public relations enables corporate interests “to control the masses’ behavior without their knowledge,” through a maneuver her father termed “the engineering of consent, a bone-chilling phrase if there ever was one.” In short, Ms. Bernays considers public relations “un-American.”¹

Indeed, whether used as noun or verb, the term “PR” carries so many negative connotations, we have studiously avoided its use in this book. But before tackling public relations ethics head-on, we should consider the bedrock question implicit in Ms. Bernays’s assessment—is public relations inherently unethical? Are ethics and public relations mutually exclusive, like ethical embezzlement?

Any occupation can be practiced unethically. Health care professionals are generally regarded as highly ethical. They have topped the list since Gallup started surveying people about the ethical standards of various occupations back in 1999.² Yet there are more nurses and doctors in jail than public relations people. Forty-five nurses and doctors were convicted of serial murder between 1970 and 2006 (Yorker et al., 2006). But no one is saying the practice of medicine is inherently unethical. With just two public relations people serving time in recent years (for overbilling the City of Los Angeles Water Department), public relations has to rank as one of the most law-abiding occupations around.

Of course, not everything legal is ethical. To many, public relations operates in the dimly lit corners of commerce through whispers, innuendo, and misdirection. And because it works best when unseen, it naturally raises suspicion. People tend to be wary of any occupation dedicated to making them think or act in a certain way. Popular conceptions of public relations range from the relatively benign, as in ginning up publicity, to the more nefarious, as in spreading disinformation. On a good day, public relations is frivolous; on a bad day, evil.

Social Criticism

A long line of philosophers and social critics see more evil days than good. Writer and political activist John Stauber (2002, pp. 100–101), for example, tells the story of a phone call he received from a representative of the Water Environment Federation who was alarmed when she heard he was writing a book about the public relations industry entitled Toxic Sludge Is Good for You. She explained that sewage sludge is not toxic when properly treated and it is not called sludge anymore. It is now called “biosolids, a natural organic fertilizer.” In fact, she said, the Environmental Protection Agency had funded an educational program to convince farmers to spread it on their fields. Indeed, the Water Environment Federation—formerly known as the Federation of Sewage Works Associations—had run a contest to come up with a name for treated sludge that can legally be used as fertilizer. They even managed to get the new name into the dictionary without any reference to this “sludge” business.³ “There really is a campaign telling us toxic sludge is good for us,” Stauber marveled.

No wonder public relations people are known as “spin doctors,” “flacks,” “handlers,” and “fixers.” One academic study suggests the average American considers most public relations practitioners “smart, friendly liars.”⁴ Another indicates seven out of ten people do not trust public relations people.⁵

Compounding the problem, anyone can hang out a shingle offering to provide “public relations” services. “The whole PR industry is lambasted for the actions of the least of us,” agency CEO Richard Edelman warns. “The democratization of the media means a lot of people are doing our kind of work without being steeped in the industry’s history, culture, and standards. That’s a reputational problem; worse, we have to be careful that everyone in the industry doesn’t sink to the lowest common denominator.”⁶ There is reason to fear that may already be happening.

As a result, even authentic public relations practitioners go by as many aliases as a Florida swampland developer. They are variously “reputation managers,” “public affairs officers,” “information directors,” “communications consultants,” or “relationship managers.” Many at the top of the field have even abandoned the moniker entirely, christening themselves “Chief Communications Officers” or “CCOs” to grease their way into the suite of corporate chiefs who reign over finance, law, marketing, and other corporate domains.

One scholar suggests this rebranding reveals a disconnection between what public relations people claim to do within an organization and the chores they actually perform. Fiona Campbell (2010), a graduate student in communications at the University of Hertfordshire, interviewed public relations people while looking for a thesis topic. She heard a recurring theme in the stories they told—a lot of general managers were sticking public relations people with the task of cleaning up when a business decision went wrong or had bad consequences. Needing to believe in their client organization, but unable to justify it to themselves, much less to others, Campbell concluded public relations practitioners suffer from an “endemic” case of cognitive dissonance. “They carry the pain of their organization’s misbehavior,” she wrote, “with no realistic way to unload it.”

Media Skepticism

Other observers are less sympathetic and give public relations people no credit for at least being well intentioned. Nancy Solomon, a reporter for public radio in New York City, once described crisis communications as “obscuring facts and protecting your client."⁷

The highly respected Economist magazine has accused public relations people of issuing “tendentious bumf” for more than a century.⁸ The late David Carr,New York Times columnist and Boston University journalism professor, called it “slop.”⁹ Whatever, it nicely characterizes the news media’s attitude toward public relations people and what they do. It is a relationship marked by mutual dependency and mutual contempt. Journalists resent having to deal with “handlers” and “mouthpieces.” Public relations people regard journalists with a mix of fear and envy.

Journalists and public relations people are always on a perpetually recurring first date. Even when, over time, they become comfortable with each other as individuals, they are suspicious of each other’s motives. The journalist wants a story; the public relations person wants it to be favorable to the client. Those do not have to be mutually exclusive goals; but they almost always get in each other’s way. One of us became good friends with a prominent financial columnist. In researching this book, we asked him what ethical principle he thought public relations people followed. “Don’t get caught,” he said. This, from a friend.

Indeed most journalists work hard to maintain emotional distance from public relations people. “Public relations people work on behalf of corporations, to further those corporations’ interests,” writes Hamilton Nolan, the longest-tenured (and most acerbic) writer at the Gawker website.

“If your sympathy for the PR person stifles your impulse to criticize the PR person’s client, then the corporation wins. This, indeed, is what companies are buying with all of that money that they spend on spokespeople: human sympathy. …if journalists stop pointing out the craven, dishonest nature of PR, we are not doing anyone any favors. That would be doing exactly what the corporations want.”¹⁰

If journalists have a siege mentality toward public relations people, it may be because according to the U.S. Department of Labor, they’re outnumbered nearly five to one. Plus, their salaries are an average 40 percent lower.¹¹ And thanks to the Internet, they no longer control access to a brand’s customers. This creates an extraordinary opportunity for public relations practitioners, but it also presents an ethical dilemma. “In a world of dispersed authority and democratized media,” agency CEO Richard Edelman told us, “PR practitioners have greater responsibility to check their facts with third party experts, because we are no longer always going through a reporter’s filter.”¹²

Poisoning Public Discourse

Some criticism of public relations reflects more than concern about factual accuracy, as important as that is. Some social critics believe large corporations use public relations to accumulate and exercise political, social, and economic power. Public Relations enables them to control the agenda of public discourse and the framework within which it takes place. Rather than fostering open debate on matters of public interest, public relations seeks to nip emerging issues in the bud, before they become the subject of broad debate. Failing that, it tries to redirect or obfuscate the discussion by raising side issues or reframing the question. And, of course, whenever possible it tries to accomplish all this through trusted third parties in a strategy called “Third Party Endorsement” (Bowen et al., 2010). In all these ways, corporations have systematically undermined democracy and created a consumer society that worships false images and harbors unattainable, self-centered aspirations. In this battle, advertising has been the visible artillery; public relations, the black ops.

That’s why critics and activists like Naomi Klein (2001, May–June) have attempted “a radical reclaiming of the commons.” When they say they want to “take back the streets,” they really mean they want to wrest control of their lives from embedded corporate interests. Ironically, in furtherance of that goal, they have no compunction about using the very public relations techniques they consider so unethical in the hands of corporations. Public relations in the service of economic, ecological, and social justice, they believe, is no vice. Public relations is not inherently unethical, just the powerful corporations that use it to serve their greedy self-interest.

But other critics take an even dimmer view of public relations. For example, sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas (1984, 1987; see, Wehmeir, 2013) believes corporations and politicians have so dominated and reshaped the “public sphere” individuals are little more than human pinballs, careening off unseen flippers and bumpers. He considers public relations an instrument of the privileged. And he believes it is a twisted instrument, even in more virtuous hands. Habermas says strategic communication between any organization and its publics is conscious deception, since its “strategic purpose” is always hidden and seldom amenable to meaningful change or compromise.¹³

At best, corporations pollute the public sphere with pseudo-events and phony sound bites. At worse, they subvert the very process of reasoned, respectful discourse. And even when they appear to be making concessions in response to criticism, it is all part of a cynical exercise to maintain their dominance by undermining their opponents’ arguments (Weaveret al., 1996). The individual—even individuals acting in concert—are no match for corporations. It’s simply not a fair fight; it’s socially irresponsible.

Respected public relations scholars like Jacquie L’Etang (2004, pp. 53–67) have even questioned the morality of so-called “corporate responsibility programs,” whose aim might be to “look good,” without actually “being good” in a morally stringent way. Considerations of self-interest suck the ethical virtue out of an act, turning it into a purely reciprocal transaction. Furthermore, she suggests that in all its functions, “the ethics of public relations are to a large degree governed by its paymasters,” making the suggestion that public relations is the “conscience of a company” hopelessly naïve.

Hidden Persuasion

Many critics maintain that, even when public relations practitioners are open about their persuasive intent, they use techniques with an element of deceit. They do not simply present alternative arguments. They exploit cognitive processes that bypass rational thought and manipulate people on an emotional and symbolic level, treating them as mere tools in achieving a purpose that may not even be in their own interest. As a result, public relations, by its very nature, has an alienating effect.

To many public relations people, that seems to condemn the practice by giving it more credit than it deserves. But critics know that influencing people’s behavior can be as simple as how a question or issue is phrased. For example, psychologist Daniel Kahneman has been studying how we make decisions for more than 50 years. In one experiment (2011, pp. 436–437), he asked participants to imagine that a deadly disease affects 600 people. There is a treatment, but it is risky with a 33 percent chance of saving all 600 people and a 66 percent chance of saving no one. Nearly three-quarters of the participants still thought it was a good bet. But when he changed the odds to a 33 percent chance that no one would die and a 66 percent chance that they all would, the number agreeing dropped to 22 percent.

The outcomes, of course, are identical. But the second version exploited the fact that people naturally want to avoid risk. Frame an argument to highlight risk and you are playing a winning hand. Kahneman and his research partner Amos Tversky called the phenomenon “risk aversion,” and it is just one of a catalog of cognitive illusions that distort our perception of reality and skew our judgment.³ For example, we have a natural tendency to make decisions based solely on the information at hand (availability bias), to discount evidence inconsistent with preconceived notions (confirmation bias), and to give greater weight to the first data we uncover (anchoring bias). Many of these mental shortcuts are evolutionary adaptations that enabled our ancestors to survive in snake-infested jungles, but have nothing to do with logic. With all this, Kahneman and Tversky put a stake in the heart of homo economicus, the notion that people always act in their own rational self-interest. As bounty for dispatching that hoary myth, Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002. (Tversky had passed away before the prize was awarded and was not eligible.)¹⁴

Economists might have been late to the party, but public relations practitioners have been paying attention to the work of cognitive and social scientists for more than a century. Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, was an avid student of the latest thinking in psychology and sociology. Hired by the American Tobacco Company to increase the number of female smokers, he consulted a psychoanalyst who told him cigarettes were an unconscious symbol of male dominance, specifically the penis. So Bernays arranged for a group of debutantes to march in New York’s Easter Parade smoking cigarettes, which he billed as “Torches of Freedom.”The resulting newspaper publicity associated smoking with the suffragette movement to secure a woman’s right to vote (Brandt, 1996). Ultimately, Bernays made it respectable for women to smoke. His practice of “engineering consent” was based on painstaking research into the public’s deepest attitudes and desires. He “created news,” leveraging symbols and feelings the public is predisposed to embrace.

Was it manipulative? Certainly. Was it unethical? Bernays, who lived to be 103, apologized later in life for his role in promoting tobacco products. But you will decide how ethical his techniques were for yourself in the following pages. As corny as the “Torches of Freedom” might seem today, many public relations critics see Bernays’s strategies reflected in the tradecraft of today’s public relations practitioners.

Impact On Democracy

But even setting particular techniques of persuasion aside, Stewart Ewen (1996, pp. 409–410) asks a series of questions at the very end of his history of public relations that get at the heart of the issue:

    •  Can there be democracy when public agendas are routinely predetermined by “unseen engineers”?

    •  Can there be democracy when the tools of communication are neither democratically distributed nor democratically controlled?

    •  Can there be democracy in a society in which emotional appeals overwhelm reason, where the image is routinely employed to overwhelm thought?

Ewen posed those questions in 1996, when the Internet was just leaving the lab and making its way into people’s homes with the raucous sound of dial-up connections. One might ask whether much has changed in today’s hyper-networked broadband society, where everyone is a potential publisher and consumers have near total control of the information that reaches them.

Questions of Right and Wrong

Public relations, by definition, is bound up in questions of right and wrong. By its very nature the practice involves an exchange between two parties that is almost always intended to affect one party’s attitudes or behavior. Every professional public relations person we have known strives to act ethically. None of them think of themselves as liars and cheats. Yet, a surprising number share a rather cynical view of their industry. According to a 2010 study, nearly three-quarters say, “PR people lie in the course of their work.” Only about a third said, “The PR industry is fundamentally honest.”¹⁵ And, truth be told, at some point, even the best of us blunder into unethical territory without realizing it, usually at the end of a series of small compromises that can each be justified on its own merits. For example, outright lying is seldom an issue, but shading the truth so clients are in the best possible light is standard operating procedure.

Ironically, many public relations people like to think of themselves as the consumer’s advocate within their companies, whether adopting an outsider’s perspective or trying to recast corporatese into everyday speech. At their most pious, they fancy themselves the “corporate conscience;” in day-to-day practice, they like to play devil’s advocate. But only a rare few are in the room when policy is set and major decisions are made. We believe public relations people should be in that room. But they should not expect to get there on the strength of their title or writing skills. They have to earn a place at the decision-making table by demonstrating a rigorous approach to ethical reasoning in a business context.

In practical terms, that often means overcoming the cognitive illusions Kahneman and Tversky (1970) warned about. For example, we naturally have greater empathy for people close to us than for strangers. We are hesitant to rock the boat by questioning long-standing conduct that appears to be accepted or at least condoned by the people closest to us. We give greater weight to the most recent data we saw or to the data that is easiest to get. And, our attention is selective, quick to focus on information that confirms our beliefs, and blind to anything that contradicts them.

The sheer pace of corporate life magnifies the power of these gut instincts and cognitive distortions. Under the pressure of client expectations and in the rush of events, we are more inclined to ask, “will it work?” than “is it right?” Introspection is not prized. Few reflect on the import of their decisions and actions. In fact, many executives pride themselves on never looking back once they have taken action. Not only is there no time, there is not much to gain. Postmortems are a sure sign you are dead.

Besides, acting ethically is not easy. It can cost a sale, a promotion, or even one’s job. It can ruin friendships, build a reputation of school-marmy-ness, and alienate the powers that be. Compromises can be very seductive, especially if “everyone is doing it.” As one failed entrepreneur who was sued for bankruptcy fraud put it, “Let’s face it, if it were easy to be ethical, more people would do it more often” (Latman, 2012, p. 124).

Ethical Tools

Furthermore, were most public relations people given the opportunity to consider the ethical implications of their behavior, they would have very few tools with which to work. Most corporate ethics courses focus on understanding a published code of conduct. That is fine as far as it goes. But companies like Enron and WorldCom had beautifully written values statements and codes of conduct. Still their leaders wound up in jail, most of their employees without jobs or pensions, and their investors with zip.

As one might expect, the major public relations associations do a fair job of articulating ethical standards relevant to the practice—e.g., honesty, loyalty, and fairness. But they provide little guidance in balancing competing standards. For example, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) defines “loyalty” this way: “We are faithful to those we represent, while honoring our obligation to serve the public interest.”¹⁶ Well, what if the client’s interests conflict with the public’s? Which is more important—loyalty or fairness? Truth or privacy? And how do you define truth? Is it everything that can be said on a subject or just the parts that suit the client? When is it allowed, required, or wrong to reveal confidences? Are ethical principles the same everywhere around the world or do they vary by culture?

Even on a topic as practical as slipping a few bucks to a reporter to get better coverage, referred to as “Pay For Play” or “PFP” in the business, the PRSA is curiously ambivalent, first taking a hard stand that it is improper, then hedging a bit, declaring, “There are gray areas, in that definitions of ethical impropriety may vary widely between industries, countries and individuals, and PFP is condoned and expected in many cultures.”¹⁷

The PR Council, formerly known as the Council of PR Firms, an association of the largest public relations agencies in the United States, encourages its members to put their employees through an ethics course of its design. But when presented with a truly thorny dilemma, the recommended solution is to check with a “senior agency executive.” But what’s the senior executive to do?

In the workshops we have taught over the years, we have discovered that, while public relations people know something like lying is unethical, even the most senior and experienced have great difficulty explaining why with any precision. And it is amazing how elastic concepts such as truth, respect, fairness, and loyalty can be. If you cannot explain why something is wrong, the likelihood you will recognize it—much less avoid it—declines precipitously. And the likelihood you will interpret it rather loosely increases even more steeply.

But every major public relations crisis of recent years was rooted in an ethical lapse. Even problems that started as an Act of God became a crisis because someone did not act ethically. Take Carnival Cruise Lines. An engine fire is an accident. But when it happens multiple times, you have to wonder if the company is not acting imprudently without due care for its customers.

Ethical Theory

Few senior public relations executives have studied ethical theory. And if they have, it is probably a distant memory that carries much less weight than the pressures of meeting budget, satisfying demanding clients, and getting through the day without acid reflux. What public relations people at every level need is a framework for reasoning that will help them recognize an ethical issue when it arises and then analyze it in terms of their own values, professional responsibilities, and the consequences for everyone affected. Research has shown that people typically make poor ethical decisions when they are under pressure. Unfortunately, public relations is a demanding occupation and ethical dilemmas are stressful by definition. But having thought through a framework for ethical reasoning beforehand can help alleviate the stress and make it easier to make good decisions.

That said, we are not presumptuous enough to pretend we have solved all the mysteries of right and wrong in the practice of public relations. Much of the time, the ethical choices public relations practitioners face do not involve choosing between good and bad, but between terrible and worse. Even most of the conclusions in this book are provisional, awaiting the discovery of new insights into human behavior and a clearer unraveling of intertwined duties, motivations, and consequences. We believe that, while the principles of ethics and morality are unchangeable and universal, our human understanding of them is fragile and evolving.

Summary

Ethics have forward motion. What we considered “settled” three centuries ago—or in some instances, three decades ago—is no longer thought to be true. Some parts of the developing world are decades behind others in their understanding of such basic issues as the fair treatment of women. Meanwhile, some parts of the developing world are decades ahead of developed countries in their understanding of the common good and the sacredness of the environment.

So this is less a catechism of right and wrong in the practice of public relations than a guide to constructing a framework for figuring it out in the heat of battle. We cannot promise that applying the lessons in this book will always produce the one, infallible and universally accepted answer to every ethical dilemma. But it will enable thoughtful readers to explain and justify their decisions. And that may help bring some logical consistency to the sequence of ethical decisions they make. These days, that would be a major advance. It might even help answer the question we asked at the beginning of this chapter. Is public relations inherently unethical?

In the next chapter, we will explore the ethical principles that have guided people in living a “good life” for millennia. We will ask how age-old concepts like “virtue” and “character” are relevant to modern life and, in particular, to the practice of public relations. That too will require some historical perspective. We won’t go back quite so far in the history of public relations, but we will consider how the practice evolved through the 20th century, noting subtle changes in purpose as it responded—and contributed—to social change.

________________

¹ Ms. Bernays expressed these thoughts about public relations in her review of Stuart Ewen’s history of the practice. Bernays, A. (1996, December 1). Review of PR: A social history of spin (by Stuart Ewen). Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/1996-12-01/books/bk-4546_1_stuart-ewen. Accessed July 22, 2015.

² Gallup’s latest poll on the ethics of different occupations was in 2013. See Gallup. (2013, December 13). http://www.gallup.com/poll/166298/honesty-ethics-rating-clergy-slides-new-low.aspx. Accessed July 22, 2015.

³ Dictionary.com (n.d.) lists the definition of “biosolids” as follows: bi-o-sol-ids. [bahy-oh-sol-idz] plural noun, nutrient-rich organic materials obtained from wastewater treatment and used beneficially, as for fertilizer.

⁴ Two professors at Texas Tech University came to this conclusion after polling public attitudes about public relations. See Watson, G. (2014, October 27). Survey: Public relations reps are knowledgeable but also unethical. Texas Tech Today. http://today.ttu.edu/2014/10/survey-public-relations-reps-are-knowledgeable-but-also-unethical/. Accessed July 22, 2015.

⁵ A survey commissioned by industry publication PRWeek came to this conclusion. See Griggs, I., & Aron, I. (2015, March 19). PR in the dock: Nearly 70% of the general public does not trust the industry. PRWeek. http://www.prweek.com/article/1339167/pr-dock-nearly-70-per-cent-general-public-does-not-trust-industry (Subscription required). Accessed July 22, 2015.

⁶ Source: conversation with Richard Edelman on April 30, 2015.

⁷ Ms. Solomon was discussing efforts by New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s public relations staff to distance him from accusations he had a hand in closing lanes to the George Washington bridge to punish a local mayor for not endorsing his candidacy for re-election. March 27, 2014.

⁸ See Rise of the Image Men. (2010, December 16). The Economist. http://www.economist.com/node/17722733. Accessed July 22, 2015.

⁹ See Carr, D. (2012, January 29). A Glimpse of Murdoch Unbound. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/business/media/twitter-gives-glimpse-into-rupert-murdochs-mind.html

¹⁰ Nolan, H. (2014, June 12) Do PR people deserve our sympathy?, Gawker http://gawker.com/do-pr-people-deserve-our-sympathy-1589842837

¹¹ See: “Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2014,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, D.C., March 25, 2015. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ocwage.pdf

¹² Source: conversation with Richard Edelman on April 30, 2015.

¹³ Habermas explained his theory of “communicative action” in two books. The Theory of Communicative Action: Volume 1, Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Beacon Press, 1984) and Theory of Communicative Action: Volume 2, Lifeworld and Reason—A Critique of Fundamentalist Reason (Beacon Press, 1987). For an excellent summary of his views, see “Habermas, Jurgen and Public Relations,” Stephen Wehmeir, pp. 410–411, The Encyclopedia of Public Relations, edited by Robert Heath, Sage Publications, 2013.

¹⁴ Kahneman and Tversky first presented their theory in a scholarly article. See Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A, (1970, March–April), Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk, Econometrica, Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 263–292. Available online at http://pages.uoregon.edu/harbaugh/Readings/GBE/Risk/Kahneman%201979%20E,%20Prospect%20Theory.pdf. Kahneman later expanded on this and other “cognitive illusions” in his best-selling book Thinking Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2011).

¹⁵ Sundhaman, A. (2010, February 3). PR professionals believe “spin” is entrenched in industry, survey shows. PRWeek. http://www.prweek.com/article/981450/pr-professionals-believe-spin-entrenched-industry-survey-shows. Accessed July 22, 2015.

¹⁶ The PRSA “Member Code of Ethics” is available online at: http://www.prsa.org/aboutprsa/ethics/#.U_t_FFZRzwI. Accessed Sept. 4, 2015.

¹⁷ PRSA. (2009, October 9). Ethical Standards Advisory PS-9. http://www.prsa.org/AboutPRSA/Ethics/EthicalStandardsAdvisories/Documents/PSA-09.pdf. Accessed on July 22, 2015.