Rosanna Fiske, associate PR professor at Florida Int’l University and chair of the PR Society of America, has put out a release on the first meeting of the board of the Society that fails to mention it was by teleconference.

Rosanna Fiske
Rosanna Fiske
The Feb. 14 release says that the PRSA board “conducted its first meeting of 2011” two weeks ago but does not point out that this was the first organizational meeting of a new Society board that was not conducted in person.

Failure to state that fact violates the Society code that calls for the “highest standards of accuracy and truth” in communications.

Until the PRSA bylaws were amended in 2009, they called on the board to have an in-person meeting “as soon as practicable” after the start of the year.

The new bylaws do not require any in-person meetings of the board. All of the meetings could be by teleconference.

There was no in-person board meeting last April, the first time an in-person board meeting was skipped in many years.

A phone and e-mail have been sent to Fiske but neither has yet been returned.

New Strategic Plan Is Cited


The Fiske report on the board meeting says that “what was different” about the first meeting was that the board is “now working from a new Strategic Plan.”

The report talks about the advocacy program of the Society; its “Business Case for PR”; new partnerships with New York University, the Institute for PR and the Int’l Assn. for Measurement and Evaluation of Communications; chapter support including a new Leadership Tools page; diversity efforts including an expansion of its affiliation with the Hispanic PR Assn., and expansion of the diversity committee’s presence in the social media realm, and issuance of an advisory by its Board of Ethics on legal, ethical and practical guidance on the use of PR for communications interns.