PR's Reputation Up Thanks to Washington Media Group

Public relations is an incessantly maligned and abused industry—right up there with oil companies and lawyers. So it's a real delight, let me tell you, to see Gregory L. Vistica, president of the Washington Media Group, featured as the Quotation of the Day in today’s New York Times:

“We basically decided on principle that we couldn't work for a country that was using snipers on rooftops to pick off its citizens.”

(Washington Media Group dropped Tunisia as a public relations client after that nation cracked down on protesters.)

Bravo!

--Bill Paarlberg, Editor, The Measurement Standard
The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.

 

Comments

[Francis Moran]

I'm sorry -- the folks at Washington Media Group didn't know their client was a kleptomaniacal torturer and murderer of its own people until they saw the snipers on the roof?

The only thing being decided on here is the disinclination to be exposed as being complicit now that the world's spotlight has been shone on a dark corner of the world where WMG was perfectly happy to work until now.

That's not called principle; that's called hypocritical expediency and I'm not sure how it helps up PR's reputation one little bit.

[Bill Paarlberg]

Good point Francis. If “principle” really had anything to do with it, WMG probably wouldn’t be taking that sort of client anyway.

But somebody is going to do PR for the evildoers of the world. (Aren’t they?) So should an agency that does do that kind of work just own up to their own complicity? Or does the lack of principles have more to do with, as you say, bailing when the world starts to notice? In this case, what should WMG have done? Suppose they said, “We’re sticking by our client, good or bad.” That might make them less hypocritical, but would it make them any more principled?