It’s an elixir of journalism that is being used more and more to sell newspapers and newspaper ads online. The Fourth Estate’s First Amendment rights in practice guarantee that essentially anything can be said about anybody if attached to one magic word: allege.
He said, she said. Truth and facts be damned. Public pissing matches sell. Provide appropriate attribution, continue with referencing situations as having been alleged to have occurred and the public indubitably makes up its own mind, usually believing the allegation especially if it’s negative and involves people with power and money.
The net effect: organizations, politicians and celebrities are vilified, tried and convicted in the news media. Allegations ensure the purported guilty are just that, whether they really are.
It’s common for this deduction to occur on blogs. A scandal is summarized and comments below the original post translate the allegation and reiterate it as a point of fact, despite in many cases no real harm, crime or cover-up actually occurring. (Lanny Davis has written convincingly about America’s scandal culture, which will be a subject of a future post. In addition, Eric Denzenhall has published two books on this exact topic.)
I once had a reporter say to me, “Well, this is what (the alleger) said, so that’s what I’m going to print.” The reporter had been provided with peer-reviewed journal articles that more than refuted the allegation. The reporter refused to read the scientific literature. No matter, and not necessarily surprising, as the story had likely been written before this interview had occurred. What was more telling is that the reporter’s editor was sitting there mute about the entire exchange.
Fortunately some reporters view allegations these days more skeptically—though politicians and government officials seem to rarely get the benefit of such doubt—and allegations by lay people are sometimes given more scrutiny.
Public relations professionals can’t bank on this, though. We are viewed by reporters as biased, doing all we can to perverse our client’s or organization’s reputation and spinning negative realities (which is unfortunately too true in many cases). Another reporter once informed me that anything I said couldn’t be trusted essentially because of who paid my check. Oddly, I take this as both a curse and a blessing. Such a statement says that news reporters have no idea what public relations is actually about, which can work in our favor. It also means that this is a great irony about the profession—public relations has consistently suffered a brand-identity crisis.
Ethically, however, PR practitioners hold certain obligations. Should a negative allegation be false, we have a responsibility to vigorously defend our clients, leaders and organizations. In the age of instantaneous communication and democratized media outlets, organizations should protect reputations, playing hardball if necessary. Conversely, should the allegation be true, or partially true, we have an obligation to counsel leadership to own up to it, which is an aspect of public relations many journalists appear clueless about. Both types responses are becoming an art form for PR practitioners.
In a day when allegations rule topical coverage, public relations is forced at times to get nasty. Practitioners should take heed—as should those who make unsubstantiated and misleading allegations.
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