What do the coach of the Seattle Seahawks and the anchor of the NBC Nightly News have in common?

If you said, “They each torpedoed their reputations with one bad call,” well then….ding….ding…ding…we have a winner!

As both Seattle coach Pete Carroll and NBC anchor Brian Williams discovered, in the year of our lord 20 and 15, “reputation” is a most perishable commodity, which may take years to build but can be lost in the blink of an eye.

carroll, williamsThat’s what happened when Carroll took the hit for the mind-numbing one-yard pass that cost his team the Super Bowl, and when Williams acknowledged he had fibbed about being on a helicopter under attack in Iraq. Each was a momentary lapse that ruined years of credibility creation.

Indeed, organizations and individuals concerned today with building their credibility – and who isn’t? – must do nothing less than rethink their reputations to deal with the eminently more dangerous landscape they confront.

For PR professionals whose job it is to build credibility, the following new realities must always be considered.

Everybody is a journalist.

And we’re not just talking about pretend journalists like Al Sharpton or Sean Hannity.

No, today everybody is a journalist, and I mean, “everybody.”

• 2 billion Internet users

• 1 billion Facebook users

• 1 billion camera phones

• 150 million blogs

• 200 million Twitter users

Where once the “old guard” journalists --- men (and most were men) like Harry Reasoner and John Chancellor and Walter Cronkite – were among the most trusted individuals in society, today’s “new breed” journalists – like Bill Maher and Bill O’Reilly and (ye gods!) Nancy Grace – are respected only by the zealots and the naive.

In such an environment, when you make a grievous public error, like the Pete Carroll touchdown call, you are destined to die a thousand deaths as citizen journalists eviscerate you on the Net.

Standards are lower.

Beyond the ubiquitous misinformation and grammatical mistakes that pervade print, broadcast and Internet journalism, there is the reality that today’s reporters don’t even attempt to be objective.

In the old days – before cable and the `Net – journalists learned that while pure objectivity is impossible – we all have biases and predilections – nonetheless, a reporter’s challenge was to try to be as neutral as possible, presenting both sides of any story.

Today, such objectivity isn’t even considered. And that’s why, according to the most recent Gallup Poll, 21% of Americans rate “the honesty and ethical standards” of journalists as “low or very low.”

Support is lagging.

At the same time, trust in once-respected institutions across the board has waned.

According to the most recent Harris Interactive reputation survey, trust in major American institutions has rarely been lower. In terms of institutions in which American trust has deteriorated over recent years, the following rank worst:

• Congress

• Federal government

• Mortgage lenders

• Wall Street

• White House

• Major corporations

• Health Insurance companies

• Banks

With such little goodwill trade on, little wonder people are quick to believe the worst when a major institutions or well-known individual, e.g. Brian Williams, messes up. Trust has simply dried up.

Management no longer controls the dialogue.

As the Arthur Page Society put it in its 2008 “Authentic Enterprise:” publication, “In a world where the tools and relationships of reputation and influence are available to all – the irresponsible as well as the responsible, friends as well as foes – the identity and definition of an enterprise is subject to far less control than in the past.“

Social media, in particular, has dropped the hammer on top-down communication. That’s how Brian Williams’ lie was found out; a fellow helicopter passenger tweeted that the anchor’s memory was faulty. And that’s why Amy Pascal was canned as Sony Pictures co-chairman; her mindless tweets were exposed by North Korean hackers.

As a consequence of this one-and-done reality, any counselor practicing in this brave, new public relations environment must consider rethinking reputation as a principal challenge.