The PR Advocate – Who Will Stand Up for Us?

There has been a quite meaningful discussion going on over at Shel Holtz’s blog about what our professional associations should (or shouldn't) do to promote the public relations profession.

Disclosure: I am a member of PRSA and serve as a national delegate. I am also on the Board of PRSA San Antonio.

I thought it was interesting when a few years ago PRSA said that it was starting an Advocacy Committee and that they would comment (publicly) on the issues of the day affecting PR.

Last year, they had a pretty active committee (or so it seemed) and they even commented yesterday on the Iraq “Pay for Play” scandal, a topic I covered in my blog American “Pay for Play” in Iraqi Press on November 30.

The committee members put out a number of position statements over the last few years, and also sent out ethics advisories to their members outlining where PRSA stood on various behaviors. They even testified before Congress in the Video News Release (VNR) flap. They took the stand that all VNRs should be clearly marked.

While much of this is light years ahead of where they were before, I think that their problem is in the effective dissemination of their positions.

One way to have instant penetration would be to start a blog. I made this recommendation to the Advocacy Committee in a leadership call a few months ago (before I started blogging) but was pretty much shot down on the spot.

I have already floated the idea of starting such a blog with a team of PRSA San Antonio professionals to promote the profession and ethical behavior by professionals in San Antonio and beyond. The board was all for it. So, expect to see something like this from us early in the New Year.