The Flak over Flacks—and Hacks

Among the many thousands of responses to the recent diatribe against public relations by CBS News Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen on the CBS News program “Sunday Morning” recently, two stand out.

In case you missed them, the first is by the dean of public relations, Harold Burson, who sensibly argues in his blog that while interpretations of facts may lead to disagreements over what’s true and what’s not, “… after all is said and done, the public gets it right.” Bottom line: “… lying doesn’t work in a Democratic society.” Harold bemoans the fact that we in public relations have done a terrible job explaining what we do, but says, “… there’s plenty of time to fix it — and forget about CBS ‘Sunday Morning.'”

The second, fittingly, is from CBS’s own head of communications, Gil Schwartz, a.k.a. Stanley Bing, who was able to do what no one else could have done: read his response on the air on “Sunday Morning.” This placement, combined with Gil’s inimitable hilarious wit, made it the perfect comeback to Mr. Cohen’s ill-considered invective.

I hope we’ll follow Harold’s advice and work to fix public misconceptions about public relations, and do so with a healthy dose of Gil’s sense of humor.