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passed on voluntarily to the media, and to “intervene in the reporting process in a manner that has a reasonable chance of influencing the reporting outcome in known
ways.”21
The philosophy expressed in O’Malley’s thinking may have affected a change in
the CPRS Code. The following provision from a previous code was dropped around
1993: “a) A member shall act primarily in the public interest in the practice of public
relations and shall neither act nor induce others to act in a way which may affect unfa-
vorably the practice of public relations, the community, or the Society....” However,
the code available on the CPRS website in April 2012 states that “Members shall con-
duct their professional lives in a manner that does not conflict with the public interest
and the dignity of the individual, with respect for the rights of the public as contained
in the Constitution of Canada and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”22
It hardly needs stating that any attempt at secrecy must itself be kept secret or the
policy of information restraint will backfire and give the institution an even worse pub-
lic profile. In 1988, there were calls for resumption of international boycotting activity
against Nestlé in the light of accusations that the company once again was distributing
free formula to clinics and hospitals in developing countries. When the PR firm Ogilvy
and Mather gave advice to Nestlé to discourage media attention, the report containing
the advice somehow was leaked to the press, with consequent negative publicity. The
advice was to engage in the strategy of “pro-active neutralization” and to monitor grass
roots activities:
As always, the media have the potential to exacerbate the issue, create much greater
awareness than desired, and continuously find negative in either neutral or positive
news.
In light of this, Ogilvy & Mather recommends that as a general rule Nestlé
should be reactive regarding boycott materials and not initiate media communica-
tions. If the media ask questions or want a story, Nestlé representatives should judge
and respond accordingly—not initiate. This avoids generating more awareness of
the issue.
The same report also advised Nestlé to help “inoculate” against bad publicity by engag-
ing in a positive “do good” public service campaign to give Carnation (a Nestlé sub-
sidiary that markets infant formula) a good image. For this, the report recommended
“Carnation Care” (foster care for HIV-infected children and infants).23
A similar boomerang hit Ontario Hydro in 1990 following brownouts that
occurred around Christmas 1988. Somehow, the Energy Probe Research Foundation
obtained a copy of a report prepared by Goldfarb Consultants and presented to
Ontario Hydro officials earlier that year. In a newsletter, Norman Rubin, the founda-
tion’s director of nuclear research, detailed some of the advice in the report. The public
was reluctant, it said, to go along with a $200 billion power expansion plan calling
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for, among other things, 14 Darlington-sized nuclear reactors. The report noted that it would be difficult to convince the public of the need for the expansion if there were
few or no brownouts and blackouts. Three months later, Hydro began to experience
brownouts in parts of the province. “This year,” wrote Rubin, “over a period of several
months, Hydro denied repeatedly that this report existed, even though Hydro was
required by law to divulge it at Ontario Energy Board hearings.”24
Without commenting on the correctness or otherwise of Mr. Rubin’s assess-
ment of the legal requirements on Ontario Hydro regarding the report’s contents,
the incident does suggest one very important ethical restriction on a PR strategy in
which secrecy is vital. If the necessity for secrecy conflicts with legal requirements to
divulge the secret matter, it is unethical to violate those legal requirements. Since it is
unethical to sustain the strategy of secrecy under those circumstances, it sets the stage
for a PR disaster if such a strategy were adopted. Perhaps a calculated risk might be
taken that illegal suppression of the document would never be discovered. Breaking
the law is not normally a good ethical practice, but in this case doing so violates the
whole spirit of democracy. The law exists for the purpose of allowing the public to
know what is happening in vital matters affecting the public interest. Suppression of
the reports defies that principle. So from an ethical point of view, sound PR advice
should be against embarking on such a strategy. But even from a practical standpoint,
the huge downside risk of discovery could be expected to offset predicted gains even
if there is a fair likelihood of maintaining secrecy. This is especially true in a post-
WikiLeaks era when anonymous whistle blowers may proliferate.
Earlier, we mentioned Bok’s criterion of publicity in connection with assessing
the ethics of lying. The same test can be usefully applied, with some qualifications,
to a PR strategy. How would it look if the strategy became publicized? If the public
resents being manipulated, it is likely that the strategy is wrong. However, we have
seen Whately’s argument, in the light of which not all deceptions are necessarily
wrong; that kind of reasoning can apply here as well.
Ivy Lee and the Ethics of Public Relations
It is notable that one of the earliest and most successful practitioners of pub-
lic relations, Ivy Lee (1877–1934), was outspoken about the importance of ethi-
cal behaviour in the profession. What he never ceased to emphasize in particular
was the need to be upfront about the funding source of any campaign, for reasons
that will be explored below. Lee is well-known in PR circles in the United States.
A University of Michigan study ranked him the most outstanding PR figure of the
twentieth century.25 Called “Poison Ivy” by labour sympathizers for his deceptive
use of press releases on behalf of John D. Rockefeller’s Colorado coal mine interests
and other large corporations, he was a major force in developing the field of PR. He
realized that companies could benefit greatly by taking PR advice into account early
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in a planning process rather than after the fact, when some disastrous policy mistake had been made.
Lee preached at times a rather austere PR morality, although the austerity was not
always consistently maintained, except with respect to the feature mentioned above.
However, some doubt if his practice was consistent with his teaching.26 The purpose
of PR, as Lee saw it, was to create or encourage a favourable image of a company in
the public mind. Defined in this way, there is no necessary connection with any lack
of ethics. Supposing that a company has been unjustly accused, it may be wise for
the company to hire PR consultants to undo the damage to the extent possible. The
consultants can help by pointing out the risks from engaging in a lawsuit as distinct,
say, from taking out paid
advertisements or using some other technique to neutral-
ize the false story. On the other hand, it seems reasonable to suppose that, to the
extent that damaging accusations are true, other things being equal, it will cost more
to combat the message.27 The less truth is on one’s side, the more difficult it will be,
generally speaking, to persuade a given public of the beliefs or attitudes one wishes to
impart. The more difficult the task, the higher the fees one might expect to be levied
for accomplishing the task.
In such circumstances, there is an obvious temptation to master and use whatever
techniques of persuasion will accomplish a given job, always allowing for the fact that
unethical techniques, if discovered, will tend to discredit the firm making use of them,
as we have seen. If a firm has been thus tainted, potential clients will be dissuaded from
hiring it, as the decision to do so will reflect badly. That is the reason why a firm should
try to ensure it does not get caught in unethical practices. In addition, PR practitio-
ners generally are concerned that the profession not be brought into disrepute.
What are some of the unethical practices that might tempt a PR firm? The
Public Relations Society of America has made statistics available concerning cases
brought before a Grievance Board or Panel between 1952 and 1985. Out of 165 cases,
75 involved matters of fairness in dealing with clients; 50 were listed under the rubric
“intentional communication of false or misleading information”; 46 raised questions
about whether professional life was conducted “in accordance with the public inter-
est”; 37 disputed whether there was “adherence to truth, accuracy, standards of good
taste”; 32 pertained to “engaging in practices that corrupt the channels of communi-
cation or processes of government”; 23 related to “intentional injury to professional
reputation or practice of another member”; and 21 pertained to “using organizations
purporting to serve one cause but actually serving an undisclosed special interest.”28
Prominent in this list is one or another form of deception. One can infer, with
reason, that if deception is attempted so often, it must get results and be profitable.
Recall Aristotle and the importance of favourable ethos, what we might today call
credibility. If US Widgets, Inc. is behind a whole series of articles favourable to
its widgets, people who read the articles can discount in their minds what is said
on the ground of probable bias. On the other hand, if the source for the articles is
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misrepresented and accepted as a neutral evaluator, appropriate discounting will not take place. There is in this a deception, one that is favourable to the company.
It is, therefore, highly valuable for a company to find some public icon—a movie
star, revered clergyman, famous scientist, or the like—to endorse the product without
any indication that they are paid to do so. In the 1920s, John D. Rockefeller Jr., on
the advice of Ivy Lee, provided $26 million towards the church of Harry Fosdick,
a modernist preacher who proclaimed a message of tolerance and conciliation
between fundamentalists and modernists. Conciliation and co-operation, as distinct
from antagonism and competition, were ideas that conveniently suited the cartel-
orientation of Lee and the oil interests. Fosdick was on the board of the Rockefeller
Foundation from 1916 to 1921. Lee, in the words of Marvin Olasky, “used all his
PR skills to make Fosdick and his beliefs famous and influential.” Perhaps Lee and
Rockefeller simply liked Fosdick, but the obvious connection between his preaching
and the corporate interests of Rockefeller suggests otherwise.29
A common method of diluting the immediate and obvious self-interest of a cor-
poration in presenting a message is to form a separate group and fund it. Sometimes
the title of the group is fairly revealing, at other times not. A “Sugar Institute” is fairly revealing of the interests represented. However, a “Smoker’s Freedom Society” conceals
to a significant extent that it may be supported by tobacco money. When a logging firm
sponsors what purports to be an environmentally oriented group, there is positive decep-
tion if that funding source is not revealed.
The lobbying power of the tobacco interests is enormous, precisely because of
their reach in the sense of control ing voices not likely to be identified with them. As
an example of this power, consider a story that appeared in a Canadian newspaper
in 1993 about the weakening of the Ontario government’s resolve to curtail the sale
of cigarettes by raising the legal age for tobacco sales to 19 and banning the sale of
cigarettes in pharmacies and hospitals. A spokesperson for the cross-Canada chain,
Shoppers Drug Mart, was quoted as saying that pharmacists would oppose the action
and that a court challenge to the law would be a possibility: “It’s not worth the battle,
because if there is a constitutional challenge they won’t win, and it’s not one of the
government’s most important pieces of legislation.” What the story did not reveal was
that Shoppers Drug Mart, which had 678 stores across Canada that year, was part of
the Imasco group of companies. (There has since been a restructuring and Shoppers
Drug Mart is no longer owned by tobacco interests.) Imasco, through its Imperial
Tobacco cigarette brands, du Maurier, Matinée, and Player’s, at the time sold 66.2 per
cent of manufactured cigarettes in Canada.30 In another case, the British newspaper
The Independent reported in 1996 that the well-known, outspoken British psycholo-
gist, Hans Eysenck, had received more than £800,000 in research moneys through
a secret US tobacco fund and the major cigarette companies. The story noted that
Eysenck “has consistently decried the scientific consensus that smoking causes lung
cancer.” Eysenck said he had not profited personal y from the funds, but the point is
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that people who heard his opinions should have been informed of the potential for conflict of interest so that they could make their own judgment about the credibility
of the scientist.31
In the light of the important part played by credibility in influencing public opin-
ion, it is not surprising that Ivy Lee, when he gave speeches or wrote articles on the
ethics of PR (which he often referred to by the name “publicity”), paid it close and
repeated attention. He saw nothing wrong in sending press releases to newspapers,
hoping to influence their editorial content, so long as the source of the releases was
properly identified. Newspaper editors could make their own judgments about news
value. To object to this practice, he said, was like objecting to a department store dis-
playing many tempting goods. By contrast, he thought, “When public utilities buy
newspapers and don’t let the public know that they bought them, they are obviously
making a wrong use of propaganda.” If a newspaper is owned by a large business, its
reports will favour those business interests. People have a right to know of such pos
-
sible biases. Lee likewise condemned (rightly) the practice of some power companies
of promoting in schools the benefits of private ownership of utilities as opposed to
public ownership through governments. As he put it: “When power companies have
school books written by professors in colleges and have these books put into schools
without the knowledge of the people as to who is responsible for putting them there,
that is a wrong use of propaganda.”32
Lee recognized that “the truth” is often elusive, and that people’s perceptions
of the truth are coloured one way or another. However, people are entitled to have
basic facts to make sound judgments. In that light, they are entitled to know who
is responsible for a certain expression of opinion or supposed fact. To this end, Lee
even endorsed the “inflexible rule” instituted by James Gordon Bennett of the New
York Herald of allowing no anonymous interviews.33 Such was the importance Lee
attached to disclosure of a source’s identity that he once wrote, categorically: “The
evil of all propaganda consists in failure to disclose its source.”34 Taken literally, this
has to be false. There are other evils connected with propaganda. Even if the source
is known, there can be harmful lies or other disreputable communication. However,
this likelihood is reduced when people know the source and can hold it to account
if the lie is discovered. When the source is known, the public can be appropriately
on guard.
In some of his high-minded writings, Lee showed considerable concern for the
truth. The aim of PR, he wrote, is to get things done by “carrying out a truthful mes-
sage to the public.” At times he followed this principle. His advice to the copper indus-
try, when it was threatened by a story that alcoholic liquids distilled in copper pots
were poisonous, was that it should find out the truth and withdraw copper from such
use if the story were true. He also condemned the practice of putting artificial pres-
sure on the press, through advertising, to publish one-sided articles or articles that the
newspaper would “not print for its news value alone.”35
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