Online Public Relations Thoughts

There was a small story in yesterday's tech news that shows how much the world has changed. Nikon announced that it is looking to a day when it will stop making single lens reflex (SLR) film cameras and only make digital SLRs.

That's an amazing shift. Anyone who has worked professionally in photography has probably had a Nikon at one time or another. It was a workhorse that handled horrible conditions with aplomb.

When I started in communications, I was in photography. I did still photo work in the US Army as part of the Department of the Army Special Photography Operations (DASPO). I carried a Nikon around my neck in all kinds of situations while mountain climbing, slogging filthy deserts and plowing through jungles. The only problem I had with my personal Nikon is that sweat from my body short-circuited the light meter one day while mountain climbing, and I had to get a new one. More than 30 years later, I still have that camera and its lenses in a closet at home. I haven't used it for a decades, but I'll bet I could take it out, clean it, replace the battery and fire it up.

Now Nikon has announced that it is raising the monthly capacity for the "D70" digital SLR camera to more 90,000 units by September or October. Nikon is looking forward to 100,000 digital SLR units a month eventually, and it expects to sell one million digital SLRs this year alone.

While the company said that it has no immediate plans to stop production of film SLRs, it is starting to pull back, and it plans to exit the compact film camera business next year.

You might be asking why it took so long for camera makers to move heavily into digital. Film has been around for more than a hundred years, and the economy was set up for the ease and convenience of film users. Eastman Kodak attempted to convert to digital since the early 90s, but film hung on stubbornly until about a year ago when sales of the little yellow boxes at last began to fall.

In the PR business, I haven't thought much about film in the last four or five years. It takes too long to have negatives developed. Shoot with a digital camera, download and get on to the next task.

Still, the old Nikon in the closet has sentimental value, even if my daughter asks what it is for.

This note is a diversion from the usual thoughts about public relations. It is, however, about spin -- mathematical spin.

There is a wonderful piece on the Golden Ratio that is worth reading simply because it debunks long-held notions in academia and elsewhere about the magic and irrational number starting 1.618. The story is here. Take your time reading the essay because it turns out the Golden Ratio does occur in nature but not throughout buildings and paintings and art and poetry as many would attest.

The question that I have is who started this piece of puffery that continues to endure in every art class from high school through postgraduate university courses? The essayist seems to think that it is such a good story that people simply repeated it without checking too closely. And isn't that the way of many myths broadcast through organizations -- stories about an individual's heroic deeds (Jessica Lynch) that aren't true? Or, stories about the CEO that have no basis in fact but everyone knows they are accurate?

It seems to me that the role of the PR person is to debunk myth in favor of facts, but that is naive. Sometimes, it is better to live with the myth because the public prefers it that way. Debunking it would do more harm than good. For example, would you be the first person to tell a five-year-old that there is no Santa Claus and no Easter Bunny and no Tooth Fairy? For adults, the same holds true and the Golden Ratio is one of those harmless academic myths that are convenient to foster and pass on.

If it isn't true, it should be.

Last week I mentioned a wonderful set of blogs from a dairy, but in the process, I erred. Let's let the Chief Blogger say what I did wrong, since he was kind enough to write and point out my goofs.

Thanks for mentioning Stonyfield Farm’s five blogs on your own blog. It was fun to see. I just wanted to point out that your link to our pages is not working, for some reason. And, just a point of clarification: we are NOT located in Vermont. Many of the farms that supply us with milk are in Vermont, but the Stonyfield Farm company (the largest organic yogurt company in the country) is located in Londonderry, New Hampshire.

I am the blog administrator for the five blogs--actually you’ll see my title: Chief Blogger—and I’m having good great fun doing the blogs as part of our company’s public relations team. The blogs have been up and running since April, but we still consider ourselves in the learning phase.

Again, thanks for taking note of this unique adventure of ours.

Chris Halvorson
Chief Blogger and Web Editor/Writer
Stonyfield Farms

I just went back to check the link and found that it is working on my computer, but here it is again, if it wasn't working on yours -- http://www.stonyfield.com/weblog/. As Chris develops the blogs, it will be interesting to hear about the lessons learned of what to do and not do in corporate blogging.

Thanks, Chris.

Drip. Bad news breaks. The PR practitioner and company scramble to handle the story and media frenzy. Drip. An unknown part of the story surfaces. Another scramble ensues. Drip. Still more news surfaces -- and it is worse. Another scramble.

Drip-Drip-Drip. The story is out of control. New data emerges from every angle. There is nothing to do but to hang on and hope for the best.

Finally, matters settle. The whole story is out, and the media have gone their way. Drip. Another aspect of the story appears, and the scramble starts again.

If you have been through this kind of crisis, you know how demoralizing it can be. One can never get ahead. Most political crises work this way. The impeachment of President Richard Nixon evolved exactly this way. Little by little, piece by piece, the story appeared over months until it ground the presidency down.

It takes perseverance to hold on. One must have as many facts as possible and know where the organization stands. If the organization is an innocent bystander, it is easier than if the organization is at fault. But it is difficult either way, especially when hate mail and poisonous telephone calls flood the office and target you.

But if you feel bad, imagine what the Board, the CEO and employees are feeling. Their friends look at them oddly. They are asked unanswerable questions. They wonder why they ever got involved with this organization and why they continue to dedicate themselves to it.

At times like this a PR practitioner can be the most valuable resource a CEO has, but one needs to stay cool when everyone else is out of control and work the story. That's tough to do and some are not cut out for it. One also has to act quickly and to endure long hours. The best one can do is to lower one's head and plow forward day after day, hour after hour until it is over -- whenever that is. One works stubbornly, persistently, steadily. There won't be any miracles that will bail the organization out. There might be small victories when the media get something right but it won't affect the larger issue. Worse, one will not know for months how badly the scandal has tarnished the organization.

Drip.

For some reason, our firm has been involved in litigation lately. We have clients on the receiving end of lawsuits or in fear of being indicted. It has started me thinking about litigation-support PR. It is a specialty but one used by many attorneys, especially tort attorneys pushing for settlements.

There is really one PR decision a lawyer takes when dealing with a case -- whether to try it in public or in the courtroom. A case may end up in the courtroom, as the OJ Simpson murder trial did, but there was as much posturing in the media as there was in the courtroom. I think Simpson's lawyers would say what they did with PR was to counterbalance those who had convicted Simpson before he was tried.

But there are as many reasons to keep a trial out of the press as there are reasons to have it there. For one, a case might not be interesting. Secondly, exposing it to the media might complicate things for an attorney in ways the attorney might not like. Third, when a trial is played out in the press, someone's reputation is ruined, whether or not the person is convicted. The Martha Stewart case was like that. Even if Martha had been found innocent, she would not have recovered the aura she had before she was indicted.

In high profile litigation, the case will be played out in public with "talking heads" who handicap the trial, tactics and jury. There are attorneys who thrive on this and others who loathe it.

Attorneys control litigation PR. Some are masters, and others are ignorant of how the media work. But that makes no difference. The PR counselor explains the mechanics and implications of media exposure, but the attorney makes the decision to proceed.

I have yet to work with a flamboyant attorney. Without exception, every one has been wary of the press and tried to keep a case below media attention. This has not always worked, but our job was to prepare for what might happen and hope it didn't.

There is tension when dealing with matters that may decide the fate of an individual or organization. One realizes there is no room for mistakes. Accuracy and alertness are essential.

There is always a person or group that takes advantage of tragedy to make a point. I call what they do "grandstanding." They are folks who run ahead of parades and proclaim themselves marshals. They file lawsuits they know they cannot win but spark headlines. They hold press conferences and make irresponsible charges in time for the news deadlines. They lead protests that have little to do with actual events.

Organizations are often breathless at the cynicism of such persons, but the sad part is that opportunists get away with what they do time and again. The worst part is that they always seem to find followers.

There is nothing PR practitioners can do to stop grandstanding. But there is something they can do to cut the legs out from under those who attempt it. The key is to have facts and to use them mercilessly. This is not as easy as it sounds because many events are fogged in ambiguity. Ambiguity plays into the hands of opportunists. Clarity doesn't.

Among grandstanders I dislike, I place a prominent African-American,a self-proclaimed spokesperson for a segment of the African-American community. He lost all credibility years ago when he made false charges against a district attorney in Upstate New York in a case where a black girl lied that she was raped. The district attorney sued for libel and won. This fellow then claimed he had no assets and could not pay damages in spite of the fact that he continues to dress and live well. As far as I know, the attorney never did collect the full amount from this person.

Yet, here is this fellow time and again thrusting himself to the head of protesters and claiming the spokesperson position. More than that, TV networks continue to hire him as a political commentator.

People like this African-American are difficult PR challenges because attacking them is equated with racism, or something else, when it might be nothing of the sort. Yet, if an organization fails to fight, the opportunist rolls over it.

I would rather fight, but it is not always a PR practitioner's choice. A CEO may have to take a longer view of what is best for a company and to sacrifice anger to expediency. Of course, the opportunist wins when this happens.

No one said PR is easy.

This story is an eyeopener. The University of Michigan has a customer satisfaction index and the latest edition of it shows that mobile-phone service was the second-lowest-ranked industry topping only cable providers.

But there is something odd about the results. Millions use both cable and mobile phones and they are not giving them up. People are not mounting aerials on their chimneys and going back to wire phones. Consumers have made a relative calculation about mobile phones and cable. They dislike the customer service but they like the products and they are willing to sacrifice to have them. The sacrifice comes in terms of poorer phone calls and billing madness as well as cable packages that seem to be priced arbitrarily.

In other words, public relations is relative. It has no absolute standards for what is a good relationship with customers and others. Standards are gauged against other competitors. But as long as all competitors in an industry have mediocrity as a standard, consumers will accept it, if they value the service enough.

What this means to PR practitioners is not always pleasing. There are conditions in every industry that we serve, which we would like to change. But as long as competitors have the same conditions, executives are often content to leave things as they are. Should a competitor be able to make a profound breakthrough in service, the rest of the industry much catch up -- or die.

Interestingly enough, the cable industry in the US is in tougher competition now against satellite TV and local telephone carriers for broadband services. Cable has shown itself worthy in holding back competition by upgrading services it should have improved a long time ago. There is a new relationship being built, and it has a higher standard.

Ask yourself about the relativity your organization has with key publics.

Someone has certainly picked up on this already, but there is a dairy in Vermont using blogs constructively to market its organic yogurt. It's a neat bit of online PR. The dairy is Stonyfield Farm and its five blogs are here. The interesting part of the blogs is that they attempt to carry news of interest to visitors.

The first is "Strong Women Daily News" and it focuses on women, health, calcium (of course)and fitness. The second is a blog from a local organic dairy farm and it gives a sense of real people behind the company. The third, "The Dairy Planet" is about environment and recycling -- an issue to manufacturers that uses millions of paper or plastic cartons. The fourth, "The Daily Scoop" is news from inside the company and seems rather weak. The final blog "Creating Healthy Kids" focuses on school lunch programs around the nation and what they are doing about nutrition.

The five blogs provide an excellent example of what a company can do to better relate to customers. I have no idea what it costs Stonyfield Farm to run the blogs but there is apparently a blog administrator who manages some or all of them. Stonyfield Farm also is marketing the blogs well with a banner on its well laid out and highly usable index page.

If a dairy can use blogs well for PR purposes, many others can too.

The passing of former president Ronald Reagan takes a great optimist from the world. Reagan's view was so relentlessly positive in my remembrance that he could sweep doubt from listeners' minds.

In many ways, optimists are best at public relations too. They are upbeat, positive and able to see good in any situation. They are the best salespersons one has. Their world is without limits, and if there are nasty facts in the way, one walks by them with a conviction that human will can reshape events. And, indeed, it can quite often. Optmists MAKE things happen.

Unfortunately, most of us who have worked in PR for some time are more realistic and pragmatic. Maybe that is good and maybe not. I have watched great PR salespersons spin stories I knew not to be true, but they made them happen and the end result was reasonably OK. I wonder how one does that, and the answer appears to be that optimists believe what they say to be true, whether it is or not. They are people whose dispositions see good even where there isn't much possibility of it.

Reagan had a strong sense of right and wrong built on a base of optimism. He could see Communism was wrong and his conviction of the essential goodness of people allowed him to oppose it. What Reagan couldn't see was that the Russian people would be lost politically for a long period without Communism -- as they still are. It seems that much the same has happened in Iraq.

We need optimists in the world, just not too many of them.

I was in upstate New York over the last three days and while there, I met a PR practitioner who was pushed out of a corporate communications role. This practitioner related an all-too-familiar story. The company had decided it needed skilled PR management, so it hired another person into the job. The person who came in was from a marketing background. Immediately, the new person stopped talking to the press. And, apparently, this person has not talked since either.

When I explained why I thought this happened -- lack of control over the media -- the ex-corporate communications leader said this sounded like the case. I have nattered here about the change in PR from working with media to preference for controlled communications akin to promotion. I have to say I am late in making this charge. Jack O'Dwyer in his newsletter has been complaining about it for years. I ignored him for a long time until it happened all around me.

The sad fact of marketing is it assumes that what it cannot control, it can ignore. This has never been the case, and it never will be. What one ignores can sink a company, especially if the media suddenly become vehicles for sensational charges, as I have been witnessing lately.

An organization might be able to work for a long time without dealing with the media, but there will come a day when it must relate, and it won't know how. If a company feels it can't afford to keep people on staff to do media relations -- other than trade media --, it should find an agency to handle larger media.

Wait! That's silly advice. One agency after another has de-emphasized media relations in favor of high-volume, marketing-related work using controlled communications.

So where does a company go that needs to deal with Forbes, Fortune, Barron's, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC and other national business media? Where does a company go to get objective advice about its story -- what works and what doesn't? There are fewer places to turn. And, that's not healthy for PR.

I'm going to be out of town this evening and tomorrow. You won't see a post for Friday. Meanwhile, I've posted a new essay on a subject that has bothered me for awhile. That is the tendency of past actions of companies to be reinterpreted in the present as wrong because of changing societal mores and knowledge. It's called "When Good Deeds Go Bad." The situation is not rare, by the way, as I think you will find when you read the article.

As usual, I would like to hear any comments or criticisms.

You might think citizens would use immediately Internet sources of information that affect their lives -- i.e., government Web sites. But a new survey from Federal Computer Week reveals that "the federal government has a long way to go to sell e-government services to the public." The study looked at the usage of "three of the president's e-government initiatives." The poll found that "most Americans do not turn to the government for information - not even for their hobbies.... The survey found that most Americans had not yet visited some of the more popular government Web sites, including whitehouse.gov, NASA.gov, recreation.gov or IRS.gov."

This is a strange outcome. Either Americans don't give a hoot about government or government is doing a bad job of marketing web sites or Americans do not realize how much information government can provide. It also tells me something about a need for better publicity for government Web sites.

I wonder where public affairs officers are. My guess is most agencies have put up sites but not bothered to publicize them much because "people will find them on their own." If that is the attitude, it isn't working, and it seems to me there is an opportunity for public relations to shine in popularizing government sites.

Thinking about it, there are some major government Web sites I haven't visited yet, but on the other hand, some I do look at are in need of usability consulting. For example, I was checking the House and Senate Web sites recently and found both leave much to be desired. I was trying to find information on upcoming hearings. The Senate does a better job with its calendar, but it's not that much better.

One of my favorite blogs is on rhetoric and is called Rhetorica. It is here. Andrew R. Cline, the blogwriter and PhD is a student of media. Cline is deeply interested in the New York Times' admission of poor reporting on Weapons of Mass Destruction last year. He noted recently that it is a good example of embedded media bias. His essay on the subject should be required reading for PR practitioners and it is here. Note that his definitions of biases are not the same as liberals versus conservatives. They are fundamental and go to the essence of the business itself. He cites:

1. Commercial bias: The news media are money-making businesses.
2. Temporal bias: The news media are biased toward the immediate.
3. Visual bias: Television (and, increasingly, newspapers) is biased toward visual depictions of news.
4. Bad news bias: Good news is boring.
5. Narrative bias: The news media cover the news in terms of "stories" that must have a beginning, middle, and end.
6. Status Quo bias: The news media believe "the system works."
7. Fairness bias: Ethical journalistic practice demands that reporters and editors be fair.
8. Expediency bias: Journalism is a competitive, deadline-driven profession. Reporters compete among themselves for prime space or air time.
9. Glory bias: Journalists, especially television reporters, often assert themselves into the stories they cover.

These make a good set of explanations for clients and others who do not understand why or how the media work. They also serve as reminders for PR practitioners working with the media. Most of the biases are intuitive to any media relations specialist, but it is nice to see them listed. They could serve as a checklist for story development.

The client report is an interesting exercise of agency work. One answers the "what-have-you-done-for-me-lately" question. The challenge is figuring out how to report to one's best advantage. There are many ways to do it.

Sometimes a client will tell the agency what the client wants to see. Sometimes, it is left to the agency. I have been working on a report lately for a difficult situation -- a new leader at a client. This person took over recently, and we don't know him or his style. He wants a briefing of what we have been doing, and of course, we want to shine to the best advantage. But how does one do that? With a flashy presentation that has the bells and whistles of packaged PowerPoint or with a simple presentation that focuses on content and opens the meeting to discussion?

There is one answer to this question: Ask the client. One should never be afraid to query an audience about how the audience wants to receive information.

There is a tendency, however, for an agency not to ask that question, and this can be a mistake. The agency assumes one approach or another is good for the client because it is what the agency is accustomed to doing. It feels right. But what feels right to an agency may not be useful to a client. That is where I am in prepping the report for this client. The client stated in broad terms what he wants to see, but I'm not convinced his description is what I am writing. Frankly, what I am writing looks too much like the kind of report that we the agency want to see.

At some point, I'll find out whether I'm on course or not. I just hope it isn't until after the report has been delivered.

This is the day of the year when we remember those who did not return and honor those who did. I have to admit that I am one who did return from a battle zone, but that is all. Nothing was happening when I was in it, and the experience was normal. Not that I was unhappy about that.

I spent time in Saigon when there was no fighting in the country. I stayed in an old Hotel -- The Meyerkord -- that had a light well in which the Vietnamese women hung laundry to let it dry. We had Gekkos on the wall -- a whole family of them and one old, creaking overhead ceiling fan. I had to go to the office in another building blocks away in the early morning hours to talk to the office in Hawaii and on occasion, to Washington, DC.

In the predawn hours, it was so dark one could not make out another person on the street, yet the Korean embassy guards always snapped to attention and saluted when I passed. I never figured out how they could see my lieutenant bars in the gloom. Some days I would detour through the market and stop at the old French bakery where sweating Vietnamese workers were turning out hundreds of baguettes for the day. The loaves were as French as anything in Paris, and they were storied vertically in baskets. One simply drew one out, paid the proper amount and the counter clerk would snap a piece of paper around the center of it with a rubber band. One baguette was breakfast.

There were those who suffered greatly in Vietnam. I got to know one fellow much later whom I admire for his ability to make light of terrible injuries received as a tanker in Cambodia. He never lets them slow him down. I am honored to count him as a friend to this day.

But the sad truth was that I was never shot at by hostile forces in Vietnam or anywhere else in the military. It was as a newsman later on in a midwestern town that I was in the line of fire twice in a year. I was shot at one of those times and exposed the other. It was one of those curious things that happen to people.

The military taught me a lot that I use today as a PR practitioner. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

In an extraordinary crisis, a crisis that rises above sex scandals and plant blow-ups, there comes a time when a company may be blocked. There seems to be nothing it can do to make headway against inaccurate and accusatory media reporting. Moreover, the company might be running behind the story. Just when it thinks it has all facts in hand, new evidence emerges to reignite speculation.

It is then that weary and angry executives start making decisions that might not be best but make them feel good. It is also then that PR counselors need to muster persuasiveness to keep CEOs from blunders. It isn't easy. A CEO might have decided what to do, and the counselor must persuade the CEO to back down. This is done only through a solution that is clearly better than the CEO's choice. But there might not be clearly better solutions. One is left grasping for answers with compromises that are as risky as what the CEO wants to do.

But, the problem is that CEOs might not have media instincts. For example, a CEO might be determined to blast poor media reporting publicly. The counselor has to convince the CEO that not only is this bad form, it also can make things worse because reporters might bait the CEO into an even larger -- and more newsworthy -- explosion.

One needs psychology and credibility with a CEO to get the CEO to do the right thing. But, credibility is not conferred overnight. It is gained through consistent performance that a CEO values.

When confronted with such situations, our agency leans heavily on teamwork to produce and second-guess advice. We challenge each other to poke holes, to prod, to disagree, to find a better way to express what a CEO should do. Two of us usually work on a problem, but we bring in a third to serve as a tiebreaker when we cannot agree. The idea is that when the agency confronts the CEO, we are ready to knock down convincingly every objection the CEO has. That is easier said than done. Failure is frequent. But when one is grasping for solutions, you do what you have to do.

There comes a point in every crisis in which everyone is tired and feeling paths forward on a hidden course. There are landmines everywhere and a misstep can set one off. Sometimes the wound is minor, but it can be fatal if the wrong set of circumstances occur in the right combination. When I write fatal, I mean a company can face a huge loss of business and perhaps loss of the company itself. Anyone who thinks this isn't true hasn't been around in the last three years.

The questions that the client will ask focus on what is right. Is the course taken the right course? Should the company be doing more? Should the company be doing less? What will make the crisis go away? Answers to these questions are rarely clear. And an answer that will solve the problem may be too difficult or unachievable at the moment. The company might be fastened firmly to a tar baby that smears it over and over and cannot be pulled off.

There are tactics one can consider in instances like this but they rarely bring much relief from the relentless pounding that a firm and its CEO takes day after day after day. In many ways, the counsel one gives is not what the CEO wants to hear. Open up, one advises, but the CEO isn't ready to open up for good reasons, some of which the counselor cannot know. Answer reporters' questions, one thinks, but even the counselor knows this is impractical when the company cannot say any more than it has. Saying the same things over and over while facts emerge that make things look worse is a way to make a company irrelevant and not credible.

What to do? Sometimes the only option is to sit there and take it. That's the worst option but sometimes there isn't much else one can do.

The Army is trying to hold back the sea with its ban on digital cameras. Of course, it won't work. Digital imaging is being put into just about everything. And, camera phones will be the only kind of cell phone one can buy soon enough.

What happened to the Pentagon at Abu Ghraib should be a warning to organizations everywhere. Public relations practitioners should add yet another risk to their list of things to watch out for. If soldiers could take photos of prisoner abuse, employees can take photos of managers consorting illicitly with employees or supervisors drunk at a bar or documents showing the company has been fudging its numbers. In fact, there is no end of things employees can take photos of and post to the Internet anonymously or hand to a local prosecuting attorney.

There is little secrecy in the digital age. I hesitate to say no secrecy. It is still possible to operate undercover. Osama Bin Laden has been successful in eluding American troops. But chances of discovery now are greater than ever.

If people possess equipment, they use it -- some for good purposes and some for ill. Digital equipment is in the mainstream, which means digital imaging will soon be available to everyone at an affordable cost.

Think, if you will, of the future PR organization set up to intercept digital photos of the boss in flagrante delicto with a secretary at a local motel. It's going to happen soon enough, if it has not happened already. I'm sure there are companies already whose dirty little secrets are stored on CD-ROMs that employees are handing around. It makes my skin crawl to think about it, but if it could happen in the Army, it could happen anywhere.

Get ready.

I found this article in MarketingProfs.com to be interesting and on the mark. It is a critique of marketing integration and the rigidity into which it can fall when there is a need to coordinate multiple media. It should be mandatory reading for every public relations practitioner. Why? Because much of media relations is opportunistic and cannot be planned or controlled in detail. One might get a marketing message across but not in the way it is supposed to happen because reporters aren't buying the theme and editors are focused on something else.

Marketing integration works best when one has control of a product, service and message. There are situations with product introductions, for example, where one has nearly total control. But for most of us, there isn't such control. We ride the surf and try to get to the beach without wiping out.

The examples that the author gives of Walt Disney and the M&M's color vote are two cases of total message control. What about a situation in which one is dependent on others to produce or deliver something? That's not nearly as easy and by time one has everyone coordinated and messages negotiated and approved, the time for the announcement may be past.

There comes a time in every marketing effort when speed is more important than coordination and control. This is part of the message that the CEO of P&G has been delivering to his company. There is such a thing as too much testing and too much planning.

I'm not against integrated marketing. In fact, I have preached integration for a long time, but the author of this article has an insight that should not be dismissed.

Some crises never go away. Just when you think there will be no more stories because the media have beaten a topic to death, new articles appear and an organization hears itself condemned again. It's demoralizing, wearing and frustrating. Anger is natural as well as defensiveness. Neither are good for handling a crisis. Worst of all is a feeling of helplessness, a creeping conviction that nothing one does will fix the situation or make it go away. Loss of control is particularly hard for people who have been successful all of their lives in mastering events.

But some things cannot be mastered. They just are, and one lives with them or leaves the business. I'm thinking here of lawsuits and doctors. There was a time not that many years ago when being a doctor was a position of honor. Today, being a doctor means one is sued at least once and sometimes, over and over.

The feeling that one is here to help people has been replaced by wariness that maybe this patient or that one is out to make a buck. It's the pain of being dragged into court and called an incompetent boob because one made a judgment call that didn't work out. OB-GYNs in the US live with this situation. Inevitably, a woman will have complications during childbirth and just as inevitably the woman will sue the OB-GYN. It is so bad that many doctors have left the practice and some states have fewer doctors than they need. But that's the way it is and will be, even with laws to protect physicians. It is lingering crisis or chronic crisis, if you will. One prepares for the next event and not for a time when there will be no more events.

In situations like this, a public relations practitioner can never assume a better scenario. One explains what the organization or individual does and tries to build understanding that leads to reasonableness. It's a long-term grind and it isn't much fun. But, there is no other way to counter the drip-drip-drip of bad press. One tells the public repeatedly the reasons why the organization or individual is essential until the public hears or enough organizations and individuals disappear to make the points clear.

It's hard work and often unrewarding.

For those who wonder if PR ever will come into its own in the communications combines that rule marketing, I have an answer. Look at the May 17 edition of Advertising Age on the first page of the 17th Annual Marketing Services Agencies Report. There you will find a pecking order in the marketing communications business, and it tells the tale vividly.

Of total expenditures for marketing, 49.3% goes to advertising and media and 13.5% goes to public relations, which is on a par with direct marketing (14.1%). Power goes with money flows. The money in the business still flows into advertising and media. Hence, the heads of combines and important people will be advertising executives.

PR should reconcile itself to its second-citizen status. It has always been that way, and it won't change. The reason it will lag is an issue I have written about too much already -- control. Advertising is controlled-message media -- expensive controlled-message media. Because there are so many dollars involved, marketers pay more attention to its effectiveness than they do to other disciplines, which are not even half the size of advertising and media. With the attention goes power and compensation.

So what is an ambitious young marketer to do who wants to rise in the ranks? The best bet is still advertising, and the risky bet is public relations or direct marketing -- unless one starts a company.

Frankly, I have enjoyed my career as a second-class citizen. It provides me an opportunity to tweak those who are too serious about their jobs. What I do as a PR person is often important. I know that, and those of us who work in PR know that. That's good enough.

I have witnessed several instances lately of the old nuclear protection technique -- duck and cover. Except in the present, it is careerists ducking and covering their parts in something that had gone wrong. In some of these instances, the situation was farcical and in others, serious.

As a public relations practitioner who sometimes knows the facts of a situation, it is not always easy to deliver an official explanation when I know it to be inadequate at best. Yet, that is what we are paid to do. We don't lie, but we don't tell everything we know either.

I find those who duck and cover to be a distasteful. I much prefer to work with the individual who stands and says, "I did it and I goofed." That individual is far more credible in the end, even if the person has to take a fall for what he or she did.

I find particularly distasteful watching government types squirm in every direction to avoid blame for something they have clearly done. The spinning is disgusting, and they are experts at it, even to the point where one almost believes them.

It would be a nicer world if people always told the truth, but they don't and they never will. Duck and cover is part of human nature.

I have not written about Abu Ghraib because events were too much in the news. There was no need to pile on and enough was being said. But, Abu Ghraib is a textbook case of the power of credibility and what happens when one loses it.

The US had a claim on a position in Iraq before the incidents occurred. The position was that freedom and democracy would make the country better for Iraqis. Since the photos, credibility for that claim has been jeopardized and, some say, lost. I'm not taking a position one way or the other on that. But what intrigued me is how quickly everyone saw the damage to the US' credibility. It was instantaneous.

We can talk measurement all we want in PR, but one incident like Abu Ghraib can offset all the placements and good work a country or a company has done. That is why "reputation management," a term I dislike, is important. In fact, a country or firm cannot manage reputation. One guards reputation the best one can, but inevitably things happen. At Abu Ghraib, the worst possible "thing" happened. And there will be a long period, maybe years or decades, before balance returns.

The problem seems to have started with the US entering a situation in which the people didn't like their old leader but don't like their new one either. It is also not clear that Iraqis are ready for a leader. They might prefer to fight with one another. We don't know whether a middle will emerge that will seek compromise and civility rather than terror and warfare.

But what we do know is that Iraq was a tarbaby for the reputation of the US. The US dared to touch it and the tar is smearing the honor of its soldiers and citizens. Credibility is precious: Trust in another is easily lost. In Iraq, the US has learned that lesson bitterly.

A PR person working with Secretary of State Colin Powell showed how not take control of an interview Sunday. You must have read by now that the woman had the camera panned away from Powell and told the famously grouchy interviewer, Tim Russert, that the interview was over. Needless to say, Russert did not take intrusion into his interview kindly. It took the intervention of Powell himself to keep the interview going. Powell told the PR person to back off and the interview was concluded, but Russert got his revenge by making it known far and wide that it was "press management gone berserk."

In the press aide's defense, the interview had run over its allotted time and Powell's people had tried to get it wound up, but Russert wouldn't stop. Powell, a much smarter media relations person than his aide, knew Russert should be allowed to run on.

I can appreciate the quandary of a PR practitioner who tried too hard to take control. There are times when you need to get a person out of the room and on to the next appointment. You have to intrude in one way or another. That's your job. But, there are journalists who don't care a fig for your job. They are going to continue their interviews until they are done with whatever they have to ask. I have played the heavy in the past, but I'm not sure I would have the courage to do what Powell's press aide did, especially with such a hard core interviewer like Russert.

I'll bet she never does it again.

The crisis on which we have been working is cooling. There is no new information out that harms or helps the client. That doesn't mean stories have stopped coming. They haven't stopped, although there are not as many of them.

My "favorites" are conspiracy theorists who see subtle connections between the client and all sorts of nefarious things. These people come out of the woodwork in every crisis. The most annoying are self-styled experts who purport to know the events and what has transpired then proceed to make factual errors throughout their articles.

The client is apoplectic about the errors that continue to appear in print despite the company's best efforts to correct them. A prestigious newspaper made a whopping error the other day that even amazed me (I'm used to seeing this sort of thing.)

During the cooling off period we will try to correct most of the errors but we know that once in the media, errors tend to take a life of their own. "If X said it, then I can say it." The failure of the media to check basic facts is disturbing. There is a lot of shoddy journalism in the world. But, if there weren't, what need would there be for public relations practitioners?