Ugly

Why get involved in this ‘PR blacklist‘ topic now, after so much great and misguided stuff has been written? Because “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more“. I was offline most of Friday when the action started, but as I caught up on Todd’s blog the evening I just had to leave a comment:

Todd, as someone who not only has pitched media and bloggers for longer than I can remember, but also receives dozens of pitches for my own blog each week, I certainly can empathize with both sides and I also agree with Gina that people should NEVER pitch her at her personal email. However, my issue remains with the way people are punishing people, it is an overreaction of media and bloggers by outing people on blogs.

It’s mean and it smacks of self-righteousness, it is done with little or no research into the companies nor an appreciation for all the times PR people have actually helped them out.

Let me be even more clear:

I don’t blame Gina for her frustration and she has every right to be pissed off. I think she is completely within her own power to block these domains, I’ve done the same thing in the past after frequent attempts to get an agency to stop pitching me. My problem is how people are acting to punish individuals and now entire corporations with the public outing. Blacklists don’t work, and they never have. They are a cruel punishment for individuals that are typically making a mistake because they are either too dumb to know any better or, more likely, their manager is the one lacking the brains to teach them the proper technique. Education is key in this fight, NOT listing off offenders for all to see and blindly blast. The relationship between PR and blogger continues to degrade. I fear that it is only a matter of time until PR folks start online lists of the journalists who curse them out over the phone, make them put them in a cab because they can’t handle their booze at a corporate function, mis-quote and mis-use information?

That type of public listing would not be fair and more importantly, it would not be productive. Each of those things, and more, have happened to me in my career in PR and in each instance I had a conversation with the journalist, one-on-one, telling them how I felt and we always came to a better understanding and a stronger relationship. Can you do that with dozens of people, probably not. But if you can put up a Wiki where you publicly flog people or companies you could simply turn that into a page where you teach people a better way to behave when they are reaching out to you.

–Kyle Flaherty

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