Cedric Bess, after about two years in the press relations
job at PRSA, suddenly quit last Friday with no replacement
in sight.
We wondered how long he could last as the shield for the
national board, staff, and district and chapter leaders
throughout the country.
Two predecessors quit in just the same manner and both
in front of the national conference when they were needed
most.
We refer to Steve Erickson quitting in 1996 after a shouting
match with 1996 president Luis Morales, and Richard George
quitting in 1999 when Sam Waltz was president.
George had spent nearly the entire year ducking questions
from ODwyer editors after Waltz declared a boycott
against this company because our questions were taking up
too much time.
Translation: there were too many sensitive issues that
PRSA didnt want to discuss including a study that
showed APR had virtually no impact in the job marketplace,
and a two-year, PRSA/Rockefeller-funded $150,000 study that
placed PR specialist 43rd on a list of 45 believable
sources of information.
Also, we had done a ten-year study showing how PRSA had
drawn down its deferred dues account from $904,767 in 1991
to $266,347 at a time when dues income was rising. PRSA
leaders didnt want to discuss that, either.
So they ran, which is just what they are doing today. The
1997 board rescinded the blackout against us at its first
meeting in January under pressure from major agency and
corporate executives who were not part of leadership.
There was no PR person at all at h.q. in 2000 when spending
for media relations dipped to $35,846.
That could be the best solution. If PRSA is going to avoid
press questions, why pay $360,860 (the cost in 2005) to
do this?
Libby Roberge joined in 2001 on press relations and quit
in 2003 after giving birth.
Delicate
Topics Abound Now
There are numerous topics now that chair Rhoda Weiss and
COO Bill Murray dont want to discuss including the
question of why doesnt PRSA use its blast e-mail function
to sample the opinions of its 22,000 members?
Members are bombarded all week long with e-mail pitches
for teleseminars and in-person seminars but somehow this
technology cant be used to sample opinion.
Other issues are the false financial reporting of PRSA
as testified to by three college accounting professors (including
the low-balling of staff time on the annual conference);
the collapse of the APR program; the lack of leader interest
in opening national posts to non-APRs; dumping the printed
members directory without any input from them on this
subject, etc.
Murray Is
Deferring to the Board
While new PRSA COO Bill Murray has not answered any of
the 16 questions we e-mailed him Feb. 14, he gave an interview
last week to Bulldog Reporter. One question was, How
do you plan to silence such long-time critics as Jack ODwyer?
His answer was that part of his job is to listen to critics
but the criticism must be objective, fact-based and
focused on the present and future. He also said, Its
the boards role to set policy and direction.
So we dont expect him to challenge any of the long-standing,
anti-democratic and abusive governance policies of national.
If Murray wants facts, here are some: he is
refusing to reveal his salary when Federal law requires
him to do so; CEO Rhoda Weiss wont even reveal her
speaking schedule, and PRSA is refusing to provide transcripts
of the 2005-2006 Assemblies. We could go on and on about
facts that PRSA refuses to face...while
Murray dismisses PRSAs past history as a topic
for him to discuss (including PRSAs 19-year record
of copying and selling authors works without their
permission), at the end of the Bulldog interview he points
out PRSA has a resource center with historical articles.
So one minute history is bad but the next minute its
good.
The trial and conviction
of Scooter Libby on charges of lying about how he
learned of Valerie Plames CIA identity has taken a
toll not only on Libby but on the press. Whistleblowers
in government and elsewhere will be more cautious now about
helping the press since the courts have moved so forcefully
against reporters trying to protect sources. Ten of the
19 witnesses called were reporters and many of them looked
bad. They displayed faulty memories and lost their usual
aplomb. Their sources were outed supposedly
by the sources themselves...these
are difficult times for reporters in other ways.
The International News Safety Institute reported last week
that 1,000 journalists have been killed while on duty in
the past ten years, many of them hunted down and murdered
while others died during military actions. A more civilized
form of journalistic death is institutional
blackballing of reporters who dare to cross an institution...
Libby supporters are
arguing for a Presidential pardon but Democrats respond
that a lie is a lie and that no mercy was shown to Bill
Clinton when he lied about his relationship with Monica
Lewinsky...speaking
of lying, PR Week/U.K. held a debate in February
on PR people and lying which concluded that, as PRW editor
Danny Rogers phrased it, If you are not prepared to
lie occasionally, you cannot do your job successfully.
The audience defeated, by a vote of 138-124, the proposition
that PR has a duty to tell the truth. Peter
Crumpler, PR head of the Church of England, who was at the
debate, was flabbergasted. Truth and integrity have
to be the cornerstones of our profession, he said.
Astoundingly, Rogers disagreed in an editorial, saying,
The fact that PR people admit they need to lie occasionally
is a sign of growing honesty... this
NL was lied to by PRSA on Oct. 5, 2005, when we phoned
h.q. and said we heard the printed members directory
was being killed. The PR dept. said no, thats only
being considered. The next day leadership got
an e-mail that the printed directory was indeed kaput. When
we asked PRSA why we were not told the truth, the explanation
was that a lie had to be told since leaders could not possibly
find out about such an important development on the ODwyer
website...Venable,
major D.C. law firm, has replaced Moses & Singer
as PRSAs law firm. Jeff Tenenbaum of Venable handles
the account.
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