NevOn

FT: 'Tolerate some libel for the greater good'

There has been much written in recent weeks concerning the character assassination of John Seigenthaler over his biography in Wikipedia, prompting much discussion over the trustworthiness of an open information resource like Wikipedia which anybody can edit.

The character assassin was outed and Wikipedia is now implementing tighter controls over who can edit material.

The Financial Times has a report that includes a recap of the Siegenthaler affair, and looks at it from the libel point of view. The FT says that under the laws of the internet, Wikipedia cannot be held liable for any mistakes, even defamatory ones, because it is merely hosting other people’s speech which, the FT says, gives it immunity under the 1996 Communications Decency Act in the US.

Individual contributors are liable for what they say online, says the FT, but internet privacy laws make it hard to connect the address of the computer used to post the entry with the name and address of the real human being who typed it.

And the FT says this:

[...] But there is no easy solution to the problem highlighted by the Seigenthaler episode. On one level, it is a welcome reminder that no one should rely on Wikipedia without double-checking its facts through another source. That is easy enough to do, says Wikipedia’s chief legal officer, Jean-Baptiste Soufron. “Just Google it!” he says. And stung by the criticism, the Wiki itself is looking for ways to improve accuracy, including an online rating system that will be tested in the new year.

Politicians may be tempted to react to the incident with stricter regulation – especially if their own biographies are mutilated during next year’s elections, says Mr Seigenthaler. But there are great risks in doing so, says Mr Soufron: without immunity “there would be no Wikipedia – but there would also be no chat rooms, no internet at all”. Professor Ezor [director of the Institute for Business, Law and Technology at Touro Law Centre, New York State] agrees: “Every blogger who allows people to comment would also be at risk.”

The defamed deserve redress – but not at the cost of crippling the interactive potential of the internet. It is worth tolerating a little bit of libel, for the greater good.

The bold text is my emphasis.

My question is simply - what price freedom of speech? The FT has a thought-provoking report and a controversial idea, sure to create continuing debate.

Financial Times | Allow libel to slip through the net (paid sub)

Sony's rootkit woes tip of the reputation iceberg

Mainstream music publisher Sony BMG is getting hammered left, right and center as fall-out continues over Sony's rootkit debacle.

The rootkit in question was a spyware-like application encoded onto certain copy-protected music CDs that Sony sold in the US and which did some "ET phone home" type of activities from your computer without you knowing if you played one of those CDs on your PC. It also introduced significant security risks on that PC.

There is actually quite a bit more to it than that - Mark Russinovich has a detailed explanation of what a rootkit is and what this particular one was all about.

In the end, Sony BMG capitulated in the face of a rising groundswell of vocal and highly-critical comment on their behaviour - including from many bloggers - and they issued a fix for the rootkit and recalled the affected CDs.

But it's getting worse for Sony BMG.

Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a class action lawsuit against the music publisher, "demanding that the company repair the damage done by the First4Internet XCP and SunnComm MediaMax software it included on over 24 million music CDs." There's even been a call for a boycott of Sony products.

Sony has clearly mis-handled this crisis. They originally denied that the rootkit posed any kind of threat, even arrogantly claiming in a radio interview, "Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"

So much for this company caring about its customers and their concerns.

Whatever backpedalling Sony BMG is now doing, it is customers' perceptions of the company that is the damaging issue. This could turn out to be a bit like the Dell Hell story in the sense that whenever you see a Sony-branded product, you might think twice about buying it, asking yourself, "Do I now trust any product from this company?"

There are bigger issues at stake here, too, regarding digital rights management in the music industry as a whole, as this BBC feature explains.

In any event, the communicators at Sony BMG have quite a job on their hands.

A new call for ethics in PR

PR Week reports on a call to action by the newly-appointed president of the International Communications Consultancy Organization, Fleishman-Hillard executive V-P John Saunders:

Following on from an impassioned speech at last week's Prague global summit, where his presidency was announced, he told PRWeek: 'This is no longer the golden age of PR. We will need to change to get to where we want to be in the future.' [...] He said PR should be about more than just business: 'We need to devote more energy to ethics. If we are to advise on reputation management, we must be above reproach.'

Current codes of conduct – such as ICCO's Stockholm charter and the PRCA-devised Consultancy Management Standard – were not enough, he added. He compared PR with industries such as accountancy, which are answerable for the information they relay: 'We need to impose more rigorous standards on ourselves, before they are imposed on us by others.'

Well said.

I've posted it before and I'll post it again - IABC's code of ethics which I believe is a model for the whole profession:

IABC Code of Ethics

Preface

Because hundreds of thousands of business communicators worldwide engage in activities that affect the lives of millions of people, and because this power carries with it significant social responsibilities, the International Association of Business Communicators developed the Code of Ethics for Professional Communicators.

The Code is based on three different yet interrelated principles of professional communication that apply throughout the world.

These principles assume that just societies are governed by a profound respect for human rights and the rule of law; that ethics, the criteria for determining what is right and wrong, can be agreed upon by members of an organization; and, that understanding matters of taste requires sensitivity to cultural norms.

These principles are essential:

- Professional communication is legal.
- Professional communication is ethical.
- Professional communication is in good taste.

Recognizing these principles, members of IABC will:

• engage in communication that is not only legal but also ethical and sensitive to cultural values and beliefs;
• engage in truthful, accurate and fair communication that facilitates respect and mutual understanding; and,
• adhere to the following articles of the IABC Code of Ethics for Professional Communicators.

Because conditions in the world are constantly changing, members of IABC will work to improve their individual competence and to increase the body of knowledge in the field with research and education.

Corporate responsibility reporting enters the mainstream

International accounting firm KPMG has published the results of its latest survey on corporate responsibility reporting.

The survey report shows continuing support for corporate responsibility and open communication by the leaders of many of the world's most successful and biggest companies:

Corporate responsibility (CR) reporting in industrialized countries has clearly entered the mainstream, with Japan and UK in the lead. There has been a dramatic change from purely environmental reporting up until 1999 to sustainability reporting in 2005, encompassing social, ethical, environmental and economic indicators. The CR performance has definitely caught the eye of the financial sector which is reflected in the two-fold increase in reporting in this sector since 2002.

In the report's introduction, Mike Rake, Chairman of KPMG International, says: "The survey reflects the growing importance within the business community of corporate responsibility as the key indicator of non-financial performance, as well as a driver of financial performance. It also reflects the responsibility that business has to be transparent and accountable not just to shareholders but also to the wider community."

With its comprehensive coverage of over 1600 companies - including the top 250 companies of the Fortune 500 and top 100 companies in 16 countries - the survey provides a truly global picture of reporting trends over the last ten years.

The bottom line:

[...] The important business drivers for corporate responsibility for companies are:

• to have a good brand and reputation
• to be an employer of choice
• to have and maintain a strong market position
• to have the trust of the financial markets and increase shareholder value
• to be innovative in developing new products and services and creating new markets.

The report also includes this definition of the phrase 'corporate responsibility':

"The commitment of business to contribute to sustainable economic development, working with employees, their families, the local community and society at large to improve their quality of life." - World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), 2004.

Download KPMG International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting 2005 (PDF)

See also - short article in yesterday's Financial Times (paid sub access) with a good analysis of the survey report.

Related NevOn post:

• Nike breaks new ground in communication transparency

The days are numbered for 'gatekeeper' journalism

Journalism is the rightful guardian of disclosure of news and information, and what should be disclosed and what shouldn't, and has a duty and a right to maintain that position.

That's my interpretation of a very interesting discussion point in John Humphreys' opening address at the Communication Directors Forum conference on Wednesday evening. The conference is taking place on the P&O Oriana cruise liner from 8-11 June.

Humphreys anchors the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 and has a reputation as a controversial figure, the terror interviewer of politicians in particular.

His comments towards the end of an hour-long address were in response to a question from someone in the audience, who asked Humphreys for his opinion regarding an apparent attempt at suicide last year by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's daughter. The questioner wondered why, if it were true, that apparent event never made the news, let alone news headlines as it surely would have done if made public.

Humphreys said that, if the story were true, it would have been "utterly disgraceful" for any media to publish it as it is completely irrelevant to Tony Blair's role as Prime Minister on the basis that it related to something highly personal to the Prime Minister and his family. He said there are lines you don't cross as a journalist, who know lots of things about politicians that don't get published. But if those things have an impact on their public life, he said, then they should be reported.

I agree, actually, with the view on relevance - just because you know something about somebody doesn't mean you should just make it public. That applies in any situation, not only about politicians.

Yet whether this particular story is true or not - and the way Humphrey's reacted to the question makes me think that it is - Humphreys' unequivocal view is saying that a journalist can make a decision on withholding news or information based on a subjective judgement about that news or information and, in a sense, act as a censor.

To me, this highlights a yawning gap between how some people see the continuing traditional role of the journalist - as the guardian or gatekeeper of what the public should be told - and what is actually happening today. If anyone with a blog can be regarded as a journalist, and many people say precisely that especially in the USA, how long will it be before someone with a blog - and that someone could equally be a 'real' journalist - does publish information that will make big news headlines and who doesn't subscribe to any view about codes of practice, journalistic ethics or any other commonly-held views on professional behaviour.

I think it's just a matter of time before a truly mega news event makes massive headlines, either in one country or globally, because of a disclosure by a blogger. And that mega news item, by the way, will be just that, not about trivia such as journalists in the US getting the can. That blogger will just go ahead and publish the news simply because it is news. He or she won't think twice about codes of practice, etc. Indeed, that blogger won't even regard him or herself as a journalist, even if others might.

When that happens, the disappearing world of traditional news reporting and consumption as portrayed by EPIC gets one step closer.

[Side note: I'm on the Oriana which sailed from Southampton on Wednesday evening. There is internet access, via satellite, at an uncomfortable access price of £15 per hour. Access is via a dedicated 'internet cafe' on board - you don't just turn on your laptop and get a wireless connection. So I hope to blog some more about the conference between now and the weekend as opportunity allows, or until I use up my £15 access credit. But let's put price in perspective. At least there's high-speed internet which works out at 25 pence per minute. Imagine if it were only dial-up where the cost of making a phone call from the ship is an eye-watering £4.25 per minute.]

Knowing right from wrong is intuitive

Last month, 119 applicants to Harvard Business School followed a link on a Business Week message board to access a website containing confidential information about their admittance, a Financial Times report says. Harvard decided this constituted hacking and Kim Clark, the dean of the business school, decided the applicants would all now be rejected.

This quote by Kim Clark puts the debate about ethics in PR and other aspects of organizational communication into stark perspective:

"Our mission is to educate principled leaders who make a difference in the world," he explained. "To achieve that, a person must have many skills and qualities, including the highest standards of integrity, sound judgment and a strong moral compass - an intuitive sense of what is right and wrong. Those who have hacked into this website have failed to pass that test."

The FT reports that a poll taken by the business school's own newspaper showed that 70 per cent of Harvard's MBA students approved of the dean's stance. Many students spoke of the importance of protecting the Harvard brand.

The full story has a good analysis discussion on ethics in business and education including opinions from the London Business School and INSEAD.

Financial Times | A lesson in moral leadership (paid sub required)

Just because you could doesn't mean you should

Are character blogs - a topic that's producing lots of discussion at the moment - worthwhile or not?

It seems to me that a polarization of strongly-held views is emerging on something that isn't really worth spending that much time on unless everyone is talking about the same thing.

For instance, the link above is to a Technorati search of the phrase "character blogs." As I write this post, the search result shows less than 60 posts. Compare that to this Technorati search on the phrase "fake blogs" which turned up over 380 results.

So a lot of people are writing opinions about these two topics.

Yet both phrases mean different things, at least to me:

• A character blog means a blog which appears to be written by a fictional person. An example might be a blog that's authored by a toy - Barbie, let's say. Or by a brand - Captain Morgan's Rum may be a good example.
• A fake blog is one that appears to be like a character blog yet the conversation is fake in that comments (for example) are not what they appear to be nor written by genuine people. An example might be the McDonald's Lincoln Fries blog. (And, by the way, this definition of fake blog is entirely different to the types of blog crooks are using as BBC News reports.)

Is that how you'd define these phrases from a PR/marketing point of view?

All these examples are there, incidentally, although let's be extremely flexible with what we think the word 'blog' means in each case.

In yesterday's edition of For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, Shel and I had quite a lively discussion about this, and we both have different views.

Generally, Shel thinks they're ok while I think they're a waste of time (I like, and therefore nabbed, Steve Rubel's description: "Character blogs are a waste of time, server space and bandwidth").

In our prep for yesterday's show, we took a look at what some of our blogging colleagues are saying - we mentioned Shel Israel (also about deleting blog comments), Steve Rubel, Hugh McLeod, Fredrik Wacka, Rok Hrastnik and Susan Getgood. There are also posts I've seen today by BL Ochman and Josh Hallett.

All reasoned arguments with diverging views, ranging from a definite and absolute no (Steve) to a qualified yes (BL). My additional view, as the headline to this post says - just because you could do it doesn't mean you should. To me, 'lame' is another good word to use to describe such blogs.

In yesterday's show, we asked our listeners to let us know their opinions. What do you have to say about it? If you'd like to tell us what your views are that Shel and I can use in an upcoming show, you can let us know in a variety of easy ways:

• Call the Comment Line and leave a comment: +1 206 984 0931 (US number).
• Send us your spoken opinion in an MP3 file.
• Email your thoughts to comments at forimmediaterelease dot biz.
• Leave a comment here or in the post on our podcast blog.

We'd love to know what you think.

Blueprint ethics code for the profession

One thing I've frequently commented about in this blog is ethics in the communication profession. Or, rather, about the lack of an authoritative and cohesive voice that speaks on ethics on behalf of the profession.

I've taken my own stand, so to speak, in castigating our professional associations - notably, IABC and PRSA - for their lack of taking a stand on something that is fundamental to the credibility, trust and respect that we as communicators, as well as others, hold of the profession.

When Ketchumgate blew up in the blogosphere in January, led by a hefty swipe at PR bloggers by US journalist and writer Jay Rosen, there was lots of opinion and discussion in lots of blogs. Ultimately, everything died down and nothing changed.

But we could have some traction building now, a couple of significant steps along the road to getting this subject on the agenda in order to create an effective framework for a meaningful discussion about ethics in the profession. Such discussion could lead to the creation of a universal ethics code for the profession.

Fanciful? I don't think so. It's not yet the tipping point but it looks like it could be moving that way.

The first step happened earlier this month when Richard Edelman - one of the profession's most authoritative voices - posted commentary in his blog about British publicist Max Clifford and how PR is being defined by a lowest common denominator. His post included this call:

We need a code of ethics and we need to be prepared to live by it. Violators of the code should be exposed and subject to some form of sanction.

Then last Thursday, Warren Bickford (IABC's incoming chairman for the 2005-2006 term), posted the full text of IABC's code of ethics in the IABC Cafe, IABC's relaunched chairman's blog.

What I find most interesting about this is that Warren posted the text in response to a discussion that's rapidly developing in the comments area of another post on that blog to do with the type of advocacy role a professional association like IABC should adopt, on what issues, and how it should do it (I suggested there that ethics is one of those issues).

This is by no means a minor matter for IABC. Historically, IABC has never assumed an advocacy role on anything outside its membership focus. Now, there is a healthy discussion going on that, if progressed to a conclusion, could see a major shift in how IABC behaves and acts as a professional association.

As I've said before, one of the simplest ways for an association like IABC to take a stand on ethics is to visibly and actively promote (advocate) its own existing ethics code. In posting the full text in the IABC blog, Warren has made a start on doing precisely that.

Let's not ignore such steps forward nor allow them to wither on the vine.

If you're a communication professional with an opinion, add your thoughts to the debate.

And for your convenience, here is the IABC code of ethics (including additional content on enforcement and communication):

Nike breaks new ground in communication transparency

Communicating on corporate responsibility doesn't get more transparent than this. The Financial Times reports:

Today Nike breaks a three-year silence on social reporting as it publishes its 2004 corporate responsibility report. This is Nike's first report since a 2002 California supreme court ruling that the company could be sued by Mark Kasky, a labour rights activist, over statements it made about its labour practices. But that is not all: the sports equipment company has also broken new ground in transparency by publishing a complete list of suppliers on its website.

Financial Times | Nike makes the step to transparency (paid subscription required)

Nike also issued a press release yesterday about their report. Fluffy corporate speak doesn't detract from the significant news value of what Nike announced, as founder and chairman Philip H. Knight says in the introduction to the corporate responsibility report:

We’ve been fairly quiet for the past three years in Corporate Responsibility because of the Kasky lawsuit. So we’re using this report to play a little catch-up and draw a more complete picture. It makes for a long report, but I urge you to read it from cover to cover. And then some: because probably the most significant piece of disclosure linked to this report is actually on our Web site. It’s a listing of all factories that produce Nike-branded products, worldwide.

Not only that, Nike says it is soliciting direct feedback on its report. That's transparency.

By the way, you have to love how Knight describes his current role at Nike:

My job is to listen to ideas, maybe cook up a few of my own, and make decisions based on what's good for the shareholders and for the company.

Download the report (PDF) from Nike's website.

Fellow communicator Allan Jenkins wrote an excellent analysis of Nike and the Kasky lawsuit from the PR perspective in a 6-page article for the April-May 2003 issue of Communication World, IABC's magazine for members. If you're an IABC member, you can download the PDF of that article from IABC's website.

Content plagiarism - is extra exposure worth going along with it?

Constantin Basturea writes that excerpts of postings from PR blogs are republished, with new permalinks, on a website with pages featuring Google ads and asks, Do their authors know about and approve this practice?

The website in question is called PR Blog Watch, part of a website called 101 Public Relations.

Constantin's post lists 18 bloggers, including me, whose posts are being re-published on this website. Looking at the comments to Constantin's post, no one was asked, never mind given permission, about this site re-publishing anyone's content. I haven't been asked and I haven't given permission.

Steve Rubel says, "I don't mind if they make money off my content. As I see it, I benefit from greater visibility. If a blogger feels they're getting ripped off then they can turn off the faucet by publishing a headline-only RSS feed or none at all."

Well, I do mind even if it does provide greater visibility (and I have no evidence that it does). I'm not too concerned about Google ads on the site, but what I especially don't like about what this 101 Public Relations outfit is doing is passing off my content as if it's theirs.

But, as Constantin describes in his post, re-published posts on the PR Blog Watch site are mostly summaries and do include links back to the complete original post on the original blogger's blog.

So where's the problem? It's only a summary and it does provide a link to the original.

To me, this would be much less of an issue if it weren't for the fact that PR Blog Watch is an integral part of the 101 Public Relations site, which is peppered everywhere with copyright and ownership statements. So anyone browsing the site would very soon see that 101 Public Relations say they own copyright on everything there which would include content in PR Blog Watch. Just take a look at their terms of use.

Get a load of this, for instance:

[...] just assume that everything on the site is copyrighted unless we say it's not. So you can't use the stuff except how we say you can on this page or anywhere else on the site without our written permission. And like we said before, it's not likely we'll give you permission anyway. In fact, even if we wanted to, the lawyers are likely to veto any deal anyway. So it's better you don't even ask.

Cheeky!

I have a Creative Commons license on my blog. It includes two key phrases on author attribution and non-commercial use as the graphic shows (click on the graphic to see the actual license).

As the wording in the full license says, any or all of the copyright conditions can be waived if there is agreement with the copyright owner (which is me with regard to original content on my blog that I've written). But they never asked so there is no agreement.

Contrast that with Web Pro News who re-publishes much of my content on their website (and does the same for content written by many of the 18 bloggers Constantin mentions). I have an agreement with Web Pro News, so I have no issue with the copyright and terms of use statements they include on their site.

What 101 Public Relations are doing doesn't look any different to what a company called Skweezer was doing a few months ago with material from Weblogs Inc, which got Jason Calacanis worked up into a real bother (and see the comments to his post).

Fair use is one thing. Ripping off someone else's work is another matter entirely.

Related NevOn posts:

• Understanding copyright law is the hard part
• The inadequacies of current copyright laws
• Copyright myths and creative common sense