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Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Beacon “Scamazon” reports result in PR Society of America ethics statement!
Posted by Cincinnati Beacon Staff
Photo courtesy of here.
Yesterday the Public Relations Society of America issued a statement in response to Beacon news reports about shill book reviews posted on Amazon.com, citing the PRSA Code of Ethics and its professional standards advisory against disingenuous online posting. According to According to Wiki, PRSA is “the world’s largest organization for public relations professionals. The organization has more than 31,000 professional and student members, and is organized into 109 chapters nationwide.”
On May 25, we published “Amazon.com rave book reviews - too good to be true?” focusing on Rachel Friedman, whose Amazon.com account consisted entirely of scores of glowing five-star book reviews. Friedman failed to identify that she’s a public relations professional whose high-profile Clearwater, Florida agency represented most if not all the books she was hyping. Some of Friedman’s “reviews” were cut & pasted from press releases issued by her company. (Our story was picked up by TeleRead, a blog dedicated to E-book publishing, and by Actualitte.com, a Paris-based magazine about books. To our knowledge, the latter was the first time a story we broke has been reported in French!)
A week later we followed-up with “Scamazon, part II: The shill is gone!” about how Amazon had apparently deleted all of Ms. Friedman’s book reviews, a total of 72 five-star raves. That got picked up by the Dayton Daily News and by The Stranger, Dan Savage’s Seattle newsweekly.
The PRSA advisory is reproduced in full below; click here for a downloadable version.
Click here for the PRSA Code of Ethics. Also see Deceptive Online Practices and Misrepresentation of Organizations and Individuals, the October 2008 PS-8 Professional Standards Advisory referenced below.
NOTE: Hat tip to Joseph DeRupo, PRSA’s Associate Director of Public Relations.
###
Statement
Thomas E. Eppes, APR, Fellow PRSA
Chair, PRSA Board of Ethics and Professional Standards
Public Relations Society of America
June 14, 2010
The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is committed to the ethical practice of public relations. In fact, ethical
practice is the most important obligation of a PRSA member, each of whom pledges to the industry-standard PRSA Code of Ethics. As PRSA members and ethical public relations practitioners, we encourage every reputable business and practitioner to join PRSA in categorically condemning and disavowing strategies in conflict with our Code - and those who practice them.
The Code is maintained by the PRSA Board of Ethics and Professional Standards (BEPS), which also develops Professional Standards Advisories (PSA) addressing specific practice challenges. While BEPS has not investigated the specific issue of disingenuous book reviews, it has addressed the larger concept of disingenuous online content in PSA PS-8. In addition to this PSA, we also can point to several sections of the Code that would apply to situations like the Amazon.com book reviews described in the Cincinnati Beacon.
Recommend best practice communicated in PS-8 is:
- The use of deceptive identities or misleading descriptions of goals, causes, tactics, sponsors or participants to further the objectives of any group constitutes improper conduct under the PRSA Member Code of Ethics and should be avoided.
- PRSA members should not engage in or encourage the practice of misrepresenting organizations and individuals through the use of blogs, viral marketing, social media and/or anonymous Internet posting.
Among the most important values noted in that Code are:
- We serve the public interest by acting as responsible advocates for those we represent. The behavior described does not serve the public interests and is not responsible advocacy.
- We adhere to the highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent and in communicating with the public. The placement of fake reviews does not meet any standard of accuracy and truth.
These activities also run afoul of key Code principles, including:
- Protecting and advancing the free flow of accurate and truthful information is essential to serving the public interest and contributing to informed decision making in a democratic society. We must preserve the integrity of the process of communication and be honest and accurate in all communications.
- Open communication fosters informed decision making in a democratic society. The intent is to build trust with the public by revealing all information needed for responsible decision-making. That includes avoiding deceptive practices.
- Public relations professionals work constantly to strengthen the public’s trust in the profession, with the intent being to build respect and credibility with the public for the profession of public relations. Fake reviews produced by public relations practitioners are in clear conflict with the Code and do harm to the profession.
Additionally, applying these principles to situations like the Amazon.com book reviews calls for some broader perspective. As social media expands public channels of communication at the same time public confidence in government, corporations, the news media and other organizations has reached historic lows, trust is becoming an increasingly precious commodity. This crisis of trust can be solved only through aggressive education on ethical behavior. If people understand ethically appropriate behavior, and why it’s important, more are likely to adopt it. For others, though, the best cure is the public spotlight, particularly if the behavior doesn’t cross into illegality.
PRSA takes both approaches, weaving ongoing communications about ethical behavior and ethical training into the fabric of membership and, by extension, the fabric of professionalism.
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16 Jun 2010 at 08:55 am | #
6/16/10: “PR society takes stand on phony Amazon book reviews” by Steve Weber, Plug Your Book! http://bit.ly/cNL8WD
17 Jun 2010 at 08:03 am | #
Good job! PRSA is an awesome organization. (I’ve been a member for 18 years.) The Cincinnati chapter has 200 members. Here’s our website: http://www.cincinnatiprsa.org