Gail Baker, Ph.D., dean of the College of Communications, Fine Arts & Media, University of Nebraska, Omaha, resigned yesterday as chair of the Ethics Board of the PR Society after odwyerpr.com pointed out ethical issues at the Society to University officials.
Baker, who served last year as vice chair of honors and awards, was a controversial appointee because she had not been on the EB.
Attempts by this website to reach her via phone or e-mail this month were unsuccessful.
After a week of silence, Jack O’Dwyer of this website sent an e-mail at 11:55 a.m. Thursday to Baker, Chancellor John Christensen, and Wendy Townley, media relations assistant director.
The authors have been conducting a 13-year battle to obtain some redress from the Society in the form of money or free ads in PRS publications.
Luis Morales, 1996 president, admitted the copying in a letter to the authors and made an apology, but offered no compensation.
PRS PR staffer Joseph DeRupo sent this website a one-line e-mail at 3:49 p.m. Thursday saying: “Gail Baker is not the Chair of the PRS Board of Ethics.”
He did not answer questions that were put to him in a further e-mail. Townley did not return a phone call.
The PRS website, which had been showing Baker as EB chair and Bob Frause and James Lukaszewski as vice chairs, yesterday afternoon only listed Frause and Lukaszewski as vice chairs. No one is listed as chair.
O’Dwyer e-mail to University officials:
To Wendy Townley, Assistant Director, Media Relations, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Dr. Gail Baker, Dean, College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media
Dr. John Christensen, Chancellor, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Gail Baker |
From Jack O’Dwyer: [email protected]; 646/843-2090
By e-mail. 11:55 a.m.,Thursday, March 20, 2008.
Subject: Appointment of Dr. Gail Baker as chair, Ethics Board of the PR Society
Hello Wendy:
Thanks for taking my call. I contacted you after Dr. Baker did not return either a phone call or e-mail for more than a week.
As head of the Ethics Board of the PR Society, she is forbidden to talk to me. That was the case with the previous Ethics Board chair, Linda Cohen, a practitioner in Tucson. Usually, the head of the Ethics Board is with his or her own firm or a solo practitioner. They do not have the reputation of a large institution to worry about and can engage in a press boycott. Refusal to deal with the press is an obvious ethical infraction, in my opinion. Cohen personally told me the board forbade her to talk to me.
I will e-mail you some stories about the PR group but initially I want you to see the 13-year struggle a dozen authors have had with the PR Society after we discovered it was making copies of our articles and entire chapters of books and selling “information packets” for up to $55 each, making net profits of at least $200,000 over a period of years. I can send you proof of such profits.
Thus far the Society has refused to talk to us or offer us any kind of compensation such as cash or free ads in its publications. A dozen authors hired a law firm to help us fight our case but it advised us it would cost at least $100,000 to mount a suit and the PR Society would no doubt counter sue, resulting in an additional $100,000 in costs. Since three of the copied authors are professors, such costs were far beyond our means.
As a reporter covering the PR Society for 40 years, after a ten year career as reporter for the Chicago Tribune and former New York Journal-American, I have accumulated a thorough history of this group which is marred by undemocratic and anti-communications practices.
For more than 30 years, more than 80% of the members have been barred from holding national office because they are not “accredited.” The leadership is therefore not representative of the membership. There are only 4,000 accredited members of the Society after 40 years, indicating the low acceptance of accreditation in the Society itself and in the industry. The accredited rule has helped to drive corporate, counselor and investor relations PR professionals from the Society, which, instead of being led by executives from the biggest companies and PR firms, is now mostly led by solo practitioners and those in their own PR firms.
Although 2008 is the 60th anniversary year of the Society, the anniversary committee has been disbanded, removed from the Society website. There have been no stories that I know of about the history of the Society, as though leaders are ashamed of it.
The last press conference of the Society was held in 1993. Leaders and staff have not talked to me or answered questions for several years while being unable to point to any false statement in any of our stories. For this reason and for its refusal to answer press questions, I don’t use the word “America” with this group. In America, the accused have the right to know the charges against them.
As for our credentials, the O’Dwyer Co.’s weekly newsletter and monthly magazine have been on Lexis-Nexis in full text since 1989, the only PR publications archived by Lexis-Nexis. The New York Times calls us “the bible of PR.” Our website is accessed in 144 countries and is consistently one of the top three websites in terms of audience as measured by Google. Please take a look at www.odwyerpr.com, using xxxxxx and xxxxxx as the user name and password.
You will see numerous current stories and some of the 525 advertisers on the site, including 430 PR firms that place descriptions of their services on the site. Our Directory of PR Firms, produced 38 years in a row, is known as the No. 1 job-seeking guide in the field. The 2007 Directory had 98 display advertisers, indicating our popularity in the PR field. We are known as the gold standard of truth and accuracy in reporting in the PR industry and for our particular concern with ethics.
If you ask me what is the University of Nebraska supposed to do about all this, I would say that Dr. Baker serving as chair of the Ethics Board is incompatible with the values of democracy and openness and the values of the University. PR people from at least four blue chip companies have distanced themselves from the Society in recent years. Only one blue chip company representative is left on the 19-member board of directors, which includes two “senior counsels.”
As a further indication of the inappropriateness of Dr. Baker’s appointment as chair of the Ethics Board, she was not even a member of that board, a break with long tradition.
Disgruntled members have given me the power of attorney to view the minutes of the PRS national board meeting Jan. 25-26 since only a skimpy report was made to the members. It is now two months later and the Society has yet to set a date for this legally-required inspection. A staff member said the minutes have not been “approved.”
As an indication that I am far from alone in criticizing this group, 50 senior members, many of them former officers and board members, last year petitioned the Assembly to pass a resolution demanding “openness, complete transparency,” from the board. The resolution was passed overwhelmingly by the Assembly on Oct. 20, 2007.
Instead of transparency, the board for the third year in a row refuses to provide a transcript or a recording of the 2007 Assembly to members who have asked for it although such transcripts were provided for many years.
Cordially, Jack O’Dwyer