Published here on July 24, 2017. —ed
***
Professional communicators are on the the side of the angels. Because they are the ones who must explain and justify decisions to others, they are more sensitive to others. Their heritage is journalism, and so they have idealism in their blood. They are writers first, and writers live on truth. And empathy. And curiosity. And love—at least love enough to try to share their thoughts and feelings with their fellow human being.
Now, it is possible that all of the above is utter bullshit, dreamed up by vain communicators and drummed up by people like me, who profit by making communicators feel a part of a community of virtuous souls. …
[But] what do all communicators have in common? Is there one thing we all love in common? Or is there, at least, some shit that none of us will eat? As e.e. cummings’ Olaf (upon what were once knees) did almost ceaselessly repeat. Having hosted two communication conferences this spring, and having watched my communicator-dominated social media feeds over the last few months—I think I’ve finally found that shit.
That dump? Donald Trump …
Credibility. Dignity. Honesty. The public interest. Accuracy. Uprightness. Cultural sensitivity. Fairness. Balance. Self-honesty. Devotion to the truth.
These are values that Donald Trump has not only violated, but routinely mocks, implying by his every word and facial expression that they are rules for squares, pipsqueaks, and humorless drudges.
In fact, if there is any constant message Trump’s candidacy has sent, it is this that consistent, coherent, careful communication is for chumps. (Or women.)
And yet these are values that communicators have devoted their work lives, however successfully, to upholding, in the difficult context of organizations full of people who don’t.
If Trump wins, communicators lose. And it’s worse than that, because it’s more immediate than that: As long as Trump is winning, communicators are losing their essential argument that sincere communication is effective communication.
Every day that Trump has permission to occupy the public stage, communicators lose our collective claim—and it has always been tenuous!—to ethical virtue and social usefulness. Maybe that’s why I get heart palpitations while watching “The Morning Joe.”
Maybe I think that it’s not just our country whose soul is eroding beneath this man’s hot, never-ending piss stream. Maybe I think our livelihood is at stake, and maybe even the particular meaning of our life, as communicators.
Maybe we will say: American communicators will not stand by and watch as a political candidate destroys the concept of truth in our country, and thus destroys the country itself.
Maybe.
***
The very next day, I published this. —ed
In a statement whose cajones are unprecedented in my 25 years of watching the communication industry, the Public Relations Society of America spoke out against the Trump administration’s media communication.
Under the headline, “PRSA Statement on ‘Alternative Facts,’” and undersigned by the Society’s 2017 Chair Jane Dvorak, Tuesday’s statement read in its entirety:
Truth is the foundation of all effective communications. By being truthful, we build and maintain trust with the media and our customers, clients and employees. As professional communicators, we take very seriously our responsibility to communicate with honesty and accuracy.
The Public Relations Society of America, the nation’s largest communications association, sets the standard of ethical behavior for our 22,000 members through our Code of Ethics. Encouraging and perpetuating the use of alternative facts by a high-profile spokesperson reflects poorly on all communications professionals.
PRSA strongly objects to any effort to deliberately misrepresent information. Honest, ethical professionals never spin, mislead or alter facts. We applaud our colleagues and professional journalists who work hard to find and report the truth.
The statement got picked up by Politico and Fortune, which ran it under the headline, “Even the Trade Group for PR Flacks Thinks ‘Alternative Facts’ Are a Bad Idea.”
I could find no member blowback on Twitter, just lots of support, the median comment being, “Bravo, @PRSA. #AlternativeFacts are lies & lies have no place in PR.”
Now, a lot of civilians might laugh at the idea of PR people piously quoting from their ethics statements. But weirdly, PR people—and not journalists, who haven’t known whether to shit or wind their wristwatches since Trump came down the pike—may be the ones with the most influence at this insane moment in history.
If PR people—from corporations, from foundations, from universities, and yes, from government—if they just keep doing what they’ve always been doing, if they continue to adhere to the standards they’ve always adhered to (even if they’ve adhered to them imperfectly) they’ll soon be seen as radical social moralists by comparison to the Trump gang. They’ll be sought after by journalists as trusted sources, and maybe even valued by the society around them. …
And if the idea of a public relations resistance sounds preposterous to you—is it any unlikelier than everything else that’s going on in the these strange days?
***
And now?
A communicator’s resistance actually kind of happened, during the Trump presidency. America’s institutions acted as kind of a stabilizing societal deep state, not allowing themselves, by and large, to be particularly corrupted by the Trump administration. Their leaders didn’t take Trump’s presidency as permission to start telling bald face lies. In fact, they took on the many of the rhetorical roles traditional presidents used to play. Consolers, empathizers, calmers in chief. Adults in the room. And their communicators were an important part of that movement—or, more to the point, of that standing firm.
This round? Early signs indicate Trump has more power and momentum and institutional leaders have less resolve—and less pressure from employees and other stakeholders, to resist. As a communicator pal observed last week, “So much fear, so much audacity.” As we speak, the same biz bros who were in Davos a few years ago talking like Pez dispensers about stakeholder capitalism and ESG are back in Davos, so quiet about those issues that even their mewling doesn’t make a sound.
But then, that’s businesspeople for you. “A businessman’s job isn’t to change the world,” said private equity billionaire and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, “but to cope with it.” That’s true of every institutional leader, in the end.
So the question that’s down to institutional communicators is, how are you going to help your leaders cope with this new world, in a way that doesn’t exacerbate it? And that doesn’t make the worsening permanent, by letting it infect your institution, too?
You can’t know the answers now, because we don’t know what this new world will be like, exactly—or what pressures will be applied, and how. But I think the next few months will tell an awful lot. I’ll be watching—and, if you’ll be in touch with me, listening, too—at writingboots@gmail.com.
Godspeed.
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