Was PR (partially) responsible for this financial mess?

We’ve all heard the blame throwers: the Democrats blame the Republicans; the Republicans say the Democrats caused it. Main Street blames Wall Street, and Wall Street blames Main Street.

So who really is to blame for the housing debacle that is causing upheaval in the economy? Could PR be to blame?

Joseph J. Honick, an international consultant to business and government, a life director of the National Association of Home Builders of the United States and a professional communicator, recently mused in a column in the Huntington News about the role of PR, advertising and marketing in the mess.

“Lack of ethics has played a major role in our current debacle,” he writes. “And many of our colleagues in the communications field chose to ignore or at least chose not to question many of the underlying fallacies being marketed to an eager consumer public.”

Honick wrote that we have the responsibility as professional communicators to evaluate our own ethical behavior and to identify what we can do to inject honest and effective vigor into the current crisis, “made worse because of the absence of any singular leader to tell us the only thing we need to fear is fear itself. What we seem to need to fear is the unethical and impractical leadership that failed to lead but was marketed very competently nevertheless.”

Fascinated by Honick’s perspective that communicators had a role in this disaster, I emailed him and asked: So what should PR people do when they find themselves in a compromised position with their employer? What if you don’t realize – until later – that what you are promoting is unethical?

Honick admitted that it would be “naïve and foolish” to say that it is easy to “jump ship” if you find something to be “not merely inelegant, but downright shabby and on the line of illegal. I know it is not that easy, though I have personally done that at considerable cost temporarily.”

But, he pointed out, there is no excuse for “just following orders” if what your firm is doing is unethical and may even be illegal and legally actionable.  He pointed to the examples of major lobbyists and PR firms who were “lushly” paid by the admitted murderer, Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya, or those selling energy policies they know to be questionable.

“In the end, it is up to you and your conscience – and not me – as to how you should act if and when you find something you are helping to promote is simply fraudulent, attached to nefarious people or otherwise shameful,” he wrote in his email to me. “You may not know something is tainted going in, but the moment you do know, you have to decide who you are and what you will do, because the memory lingers on.”

If anything good can come from this economic meltdown, perhaps it is this: Preserving trust, morality and ethics not only protects our way of life, but also allows us to look at ourselves in the mirror in the morning without shame.

The Buzz Factoree is a Hampton Roads, Virginia, boutique PR and marketing firm that helps businesses buzz their brand by discovering, writing and telling their stories. We use traditional and online PR and marketing strategies and tactics to help make our clients’ businesses more profitable. For more information, call (757)930-0032 or email gail.kent@thebuzzfactoree.com.