Critics are spreading a lot of blame around for the current financial debacle but two themes are surfacing — the secrecy and complexity of many of the financial dealings and lack of adequate regulation by the Securities & Exchange Commission, the “cop of Wall Street.”
John McCain demanded that SEC chair Christopher Cox be fired but Barack Obama countered with “fire the entire Administration.” Barack got a “bounce” in the polls.
“The SEC has been morally bankrupt for some time now,” wrote Michael Lewis (Liar’s Poker) for Bloomberg News.
SEC chair Christopher Cox |
Financial columnist Christopher Byron said the same thing several years ago when writing for the New York Post. He called the SEC an ineffective “paper tiger.”
Lewis faults SEC chair Cox for failing to regulate companies that overextended themselves with sub-prime mortgages and for harassing the short sellers “who have been trying to tell the truth” about the failing markets.
Cox is described as “a nice man who has no real idea of what happened.” But he deserves blame, says Lewis, because of “the way he treated people with the nerve to speak the truth to power.”
Banks are secretive enough but the investment banks are even more secretive.
Financial writers are saying that opaque financial dealings frustrated not only them but the regulators.
The press performs a regulatory role but cannot do this if it’s blocked by institutional secrecy. Reporters don’t have subpoena powers.
All that hoopla in recent years about the SEC’s “Fair Disclosure” policies and the zillions of electronic impulses sent out at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars via the PR wire services proved to be ineffective and mere window-dressing in the overall scheme of things.
Our experience with those electronic releases is that there’s usually no one listed at the bottom of the release who can answer questions or explain things.
This is certainly true of the five conglomerates—Omnicom, WPP, Interpublic, Publicis and Havas. They especially don’t want to talk about their combined debt of $12 billion that they ran up in buying companies. Banks allowed the congloms and others to pile up too much debt.
The public is getting some explanations from the press about the financial debacle now that the top has blown off this volcano and what’s underneath can no longer be concealed.
The government is coming to the rescue of companies whose leaders made off with tens of millions (Stan O’Neal of Merrill Lynch, Dick Fuld of Lehman, James Cayne of Bear Stearns, etc.).
PR Pros Must 'Regulate' Own Trade Assn.
Jeff Julin |
PR people can’t do much about the country’s financial mess but they can do something about the mess in their own trade association, the PR Society.
The signs of dysfunction and ineptitude at PRS are only too evident, including CEO Jeff Julin asking the Presidential campaigns to sign the PRS Code of Ethics pledge when it can be easily shown that PRS itself is not living up to what is in the code.
There is no indication the campaigns even replied to the Aug. 22 request for them to sign a “pledge” to obey the Code. PRS staffers refuse to take questions on this issue.
If it believed in “fairness” and the “right of free expression” for “all opinions,” as stated in the Code, PRS would carry on its website the demand of PR professors for a discussion and vote by members on the printed directory; the Central Michigan proposal for modeling PRS governance after the ABA and AMA; PDFs of transcripts of the last three Assemblies; the 2008 audit with the balance sheet shown several ways (just like we see plays in sports several ways); the 2008 IRS Form 990 showing COO Bill Murray’s salary (originally due May 15); a list of 2008 Assembly delegates reachable by one e-mail so members can express opinions to them, and governance topics such as moving the charter to Delaware to allow more Assembly and/or chapter president meetings, ending proxy voting, etc.
PRS Attacks O’Dwyer in Full Page in Tactics
The latest folly of PRS leaders is printing a full page vilifying us in the September Tactics (and September is “Ethics Month” at PRS).
That page and the lecture to the Presidential campaigns are downright loopy.
Now PRS leaders owe us not only money and pages of free ads in Tactics for selling our articles without our permission, but also a full page so we can rebut their false charges against us — that is if the leaders want to live up to the promises of “fairness” and “respecting all opinions” that are in the PRS Code of Ethics.
The PRS blast, originally sent out as an e-mail to leaders April 9, specifically refers to our role in getting Gail Baker of the University of Nebraska to resign as Ethics Board chair in March.
For openers, she had no business being named by Jeff Julin to head the most prestigious of all the 30+ PRS boards and committees because she was not even on the EB. That was a huge break with tradition.
She refused to answer any of our phone calls or e-mails. Previous EB head Linda Cohen had told us the national board forbade her to deal with us, proving the EB lacks needed independence and is a tool of the board.
Gail Baker |
The PRS board letter accuses us of “e-mailing work associates and supervisors of a volunteer committee chair” (Baker).
We’re said to have shared our “very negative views on PRS with several of this individual’s workplace associates, questioning how the organization (Univ. of Nebraska) could want to be associated with PRS…”
It’s laughable that PRS should claim we did something wrong by going over and around Baker when she would not talk to us. It shows that the writer of the attack on us does not know much about PR.
Going over and around recalcitrant reporters and editors is a “stock-in-trade” of PR people.
Editors of The Oklahoman, largest daily in the state with readership of 420,000 daily, complained bitterly to the local PRS chapter Sept. 20, 2006 that chapter members called the publisher and advertiser offices on a “daily” basis to get stories used, changed or killed. [link]
“It’s unethical, it’s wrong and too many in this town are doing it, said columnist Steve Lackmeyer, who said his financial editor, Clytie Bunyan, had ordered him to get across this complaint. He blasted one “control freak institutional PR person” who would even kill a positive story if it was not “that day’s message.”
The chapter, which held the session as part of PRS’ “Ethics Month,” supplied a tape of the session to this website.
A chapter poll found that 46% of the 69 members who responded say they “have been asked by an employer or client to misrepresent, cover up, exaggerate, or withhold information from the media.”
We do have “negative views” of PRS but they’re backed by facts such as the copying scandal – four-page story on this was sent to University officials [link to PDF] – lack of democracy (APRs have blocked non-APRs from running for national office for 30+ years), misleading financials as described by three accounting professors, etc. (PDF link to profs’ criticisms).
Allegedly, our contacts with school officials “made it so uncomfortable that this individual (Baker) chose to withdraw from the committee (the Ethics Board) rather than take valuable time to mount a defense with all of the people O’Dwyer contacted.”
Baker, as head of the EB, became a public figure in the PR world and just like other public figures such as Obama, McCain, Palin and Biden must face the press and public and explain herself when issues arise. Her excuse does not wash.
What really happened, we believe, is that school officials told Baker to pick the school or PRS. She quit the EB less than four hours after we sent four PDFs to Chancellor John Christensen.
Among those we sent PRS materials to were the school’s newspapers—The Daily Nebraskan and The Gateway, a weekly. We talked to the editors of both and said this is a story of national significance that intersects both PR and journalism. We sent them the PDFs that documented our statements.
It does not speak well for the independence of college journalism that we never heard back from either of the papers. Apparently no word was ever printed of Baker’s appointment to the EB or her resignation.
“The Code of Ethics of the Education Profession” (as stated on the NEA’s website), says educators “recognize the supreme importance of the pursuit of truth.” Pursuit is what reporters do. They don’t give up just because someone slams a door in their face…three educators will be on the 2009 board and we hope they will support us in our pursuit of the truth about PRS—Steve Grant of the NEA itself; Deborah Silverman of Buffalo State College, and Lynn Appelbaum of CCNY. In addition, Carolyn Bobo of TCU, Forth Worth, will be Assembly delegate-at-large…chair-elect Mike Cherenson spoke at a meeting of top corporate PR people Sept. 18 at Pfizer’s h.q. (page 7) and we wonder why Jeff Julin did not address this group (ommunitelligence.com). Cherenson also was interviewed earlier this year by the ibzresources website as the spokesperson for PRS when Julin should have been the spokesperson. Neither Julin nor COO Bill Murray have ever addressed PRS/NY when that surely would have been a money-maker for the chapter. PRS PR staff (Art Yann and Joe DeRupo) continue to refuse to say whether Julin has addressed a single PRS chapter this year…PRS/NY, despite many efforts by the PR professors, (link) has yet to run on its website the 14-point essay by the professors arguing for a return of the printed directory. The professors want a vote by the entire 22,000 membership on this important matter. PRS/NY leaders, who appear to get zip from national, have not given an iron-clad “No” to the essay but won’t say “Yes,” either. Neither national nor any of the 108 other chapters has yet to run the essay. Several chapters that we sent the essay to, including National Capital, have responded and while not refusing flat-out to run the essay, have not used it, either. All sorts of excuses are being given including they never ran such an essay or their sites do not provide for discussions (?!). They know that blocking this important document flies in the face of many sections of the PRS Code and would be an act of supreme hypocrisy…associations, including the AICPA, conduct votes of their entire memberships from time to time. The American Psychological Assn., by a mail vote of 8,792 to 6,157 this month, has decided to bar members from helping in the questioning of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The AICPA’s entire 340,000 members voted by mail several years ago on a new global CPA category (rejecting it)… Jeff Julin earlier this year excoriated Andrew Cohen of CBS for criticizing PRS and its code. Julin pointed to the Code’s rule against anything but the “highest standards of accuracy and truth.” But a PR Week/U.K. panel in 2007 found the audience agreeing 138-124 that an “occasional lie” was needed if PR pros are to do their jobs “successfully.” PRW editor Danny Rogers said in an editorial: “The fact that PR people admit they need to lie occasionally is a sign of growing honesty”…a client of Julin’s firm, MGA Communications, Denver, is “Americans for Balanced Energy Choices” which critics say is a “front group” for the coal industry. The Washington Post says ABEC has a “$35 million campaign in primary and caucus states to rally public support for coal-fired electricity and to fuel opposition to legislation that Congress is crafting to slow climate change.”