About 50 leaders representing 16 PR/IR organizations with 42,000 members will meet Jan. 13-14 in Madison, N.J., to see what they can do about the decline of trust in corporations and other business institutions.

PR/IR groups will discuss credibility at the Mansion on FDU's Madison, N.J., campus.

The meeting will take place at the Mansion on the Madison, N.J., campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University, about 40 miles from New York City.

Fairleigh Dickinson has a Corporate Communications Institute that does research headed by Michael Goodman, Ph.D.

The leaders will gather Monday, Jan. 13 on the campus for a reception at 6:30 p.m. followed by a dinner with welcoming remarks by J. Michael Adams, Ph.D., president of the university.

James Murphy, chair of the PR Coalition, will give introductory remarks. He is global managing director, marketing and communications, Accenture, which was at one time the management consulting arm of Arthur Andersen. He is immediate past president of the Arthur Page Society. David Drobis of Ketchum is the current president.

Murphy will discuss the origin of the Coalition, describe the groups that are participating, and announce the lead representative of each group.

J. Michael Adams

Topics to be discussed starting at 8 a.m. the next day include:

–"Ethics: What You Believe and How You Act." Leaders are Reed Byrum, PRSA president, and Marion Pinsdorf, Ph.D., Fordham University, representing the Page Society. Speaker is Martin Taylor, VP, Institute for Global Ethics.

–"Disclosure and Transparency: What You Say." Leaders are Brad Googins, director, Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship; Doug Pinkham, president, PA Council, and Lou Thompson, president, National Investor Relations Institute.

–"Trust: What Trust Is and How Is It Measured." Leaders are Goodman; Ward White, co-chair, Institute for PR, and Lou Williams, International Assn. of Business Communicators. Speaker is Tamara Gillis, Dept. chair and associate professor of communications, Elizabethtown University.

The program includes break-out sessions, lunch and then a plenary session at 1:30 p.m. during which reports of breakouts will be given and a consensus will be sought.

Murphy will conclude the program by reviewing next steps and articulating the Coalition position including future use of the Coalition.

The committee planning the meeting included Paul Basista, executive director of Page; Kathy Cripps, president, Council of PR Firms; Julie Freeman, president, IABC; Goodman, Pinkham, Pinsdorf and White.

Groups participating are:

Arthur Page Society
Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College
Corporate Communications Institute (FDU).
Council of Communication Mgmt.
Council of PR Firms
Global PA Institute
Institute for PR
IABC
International PR Assn.
National Investor Relations Institute
National School PR Assn.
PA Council
PRSA
PRSA Foundation
Women Executives in PR
WEPR Foundation

Bill Huey, Strategic Comms., Atlanta (1/10):
Here's a tip for the "What You Say" boys:
Tell mega-buck CEOs to stop whining about the U.S. tax code and how it makes them so uncompetitive that they must relocate their HQ to Bermuda, blah, blah blah. It's nauseating, particulary at a time when, as Paul Krugman pointed out in the NY Times the other day, the average tax rate on corporate profits has fallen to a nearly 60-year low. Krugman's example: CSX Corporation, formerly headed by incoming Treasury Secretary John Snow, made $900 million in profits between 1998 and 2001, but paid no taxes. In fact, it received $164 million in rebates.

Old Flack (1/09):
Do economists need additional evidence of a recession? Clearly, this is a profession with too much free time.

Wise Old Man (1/09):
There's no secret formula to restoring credibility. We all work each day to build, preserve, defend or re-establish the reputations of our clients. It starts with telling the truth. It includes a high degree of openness or transparency. It needs to have a sense of repentance. It requires an unquestioned commitment from the client. Without that single ingredient, nothing we can do will matter.

There. Now I've saved you the price of attending the seminar.

Thinkman2 (1/09):
Is this funny or what? Here they want to discuss problems of mistrust of management and institutions when they ought to discuss lack of trust in the public relations practitioners willing to take any and all clients offering big money regardless of who they are and what they do.