Greed Is Not Good
April 9th, 2008By Mistie Thompson
Yeah, I’m going there.
So you’ve probably heard about Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, being dumped by the Clintons (oh, I’m sorry - he quit on his own - uh-huh) after pushing for a trade deal with Colombia - a deal that Hillary strongly opposes. And that Penn, besides having a political consulting firm that’s earned mega bucks from the Clinton campaign, is also CEO of Burson-Marsteller, which was hired by Colombia to help educate legislators on the trade deal.
Confused yet? Apparently Penn was - enough to blatantly disregard the conflict of interest that my five-year-old would recognize. (Granted, she’s five going on 40, but still.)
Despite the best efforts of honest and ethical public relations professionals - of which there are many - the PR industry doesn’t have a good reputation. The average Joe thinks we’re flacks and spin doctors, doing and saying anything our clients want to make a buck. Ethics are given lip service at best and are completely thrown out the window when the price is right. When we have industry “leaders” like the CEO of one of the world’s largest PR firms pulling a stunt like Mark Penn did, why would anyone think any differently of us?
April 9th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I thought all PR people were flacks and spin doctors when I worked in the newspaper industry. It wasn’t until I joined “the dark side” (as I used to joke) that I thought to myself, “Hey, I’m an honest, trustworthy PR professional so apparently all PR people can’t be bad.” Now, after six years in this industry, I have a totally different outlook.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Just yesterday I was asked by someone, curious about my profession, if I ever had to do anything that didn’t align with my ethics, or that could be considered immoral. This is what the public perception of PR is, unfortunately, in some cases. I was appalled at the question and of course, have not engaged in work in which I had to set aside my own moral code. It’s unfortunate that there are still those in our industry, however, that make the news for less-than-admirable traits and ethics. It is they, the few, that have tarnished our industry’s reputation. It seems PR needs a little reputation management of its own.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
With Hillary only recently embracing the anti-trade agreement worldview, I can easily see how it could catch her people in awkward situations. Taken with the fact that Bill Clinton currently supports the Columbia trade deal, and the fact that he has taken money from groups supporting it (speaking engagements, of course) it becomes a great deal less clear that Mr. Penn was the issue at all. I would go so far as saying that Mr. Penn’s problem wasn’t a conflict of interest at all, but rather was not shifting fast enough to catch Hillary’s flip on the issue. Any time a politician is involved, I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the victims…
April 9th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Interesting points, BrianD. While I totally agree that working for politicians these days is akin to nailing jello to a wall, I’m not buying that argument with Mark Penn. As Clinton’s chief strategist, he had to be pretty well informed of her position on the issue. Even on the off chance she did flip her position without telling him, Penn should have recognized that the Colombian trade issue is a volatile one, and that he was opening himself up to even a perceived conflict of interest by meeting with them personally. At the very least, he should have recused himself from the meeting (and the client, IMO) due to a conflict of interest with his political work. This is not some mid-level PR person we’re talking about - he’s the CEO of a highly visible PR firm. In that position, he should be an ethical leader of the industry and hold himself to the highest ethical standards, which in this case I don’t think he did.