Why We Need To Flag PR Firms That Super Spread Disinformation
Like many facets of our economy, journalism is in distress in a moment when facts are essential to protecting public health and human rights.
The pandemic brought on new waves of layoffs and furloughs in already struggling newsrooms. Many of the journalists still employed are taking huge personal risks to keep us informed, and not just in terms of exposure to the virus. Reporters covering the nationwide protests against police brutality are being wrongfully arrested and assaulted at record-breaking rates. In a single week, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker cited more than 300 press freedom violations, compared to the 150 recorded for all of 2019.
On top of this, journalists are still facing an uphill battle against misinformation about COVID-19, which can cost lives and be just as contagious as the virus itself. So while we’re staring down Month 4 of the pandemic in the U.S., we also have an “infodemic” to fight, as the World Health Organization phrased it. And if we want to fight it, we need PR firms to serve as allies to journalists, instead of super spreading disinformation.
This weighs especially heavy on me as a public relations practitioner, a person who builds their career on being a steward of valuable — and, most importantly, factual — stories. I recently left the PR firm I worked for after finally coming to terms with the leadership team’s complicity in proactively spreading false information, even when that information is a seemingly harmless statistic claiming “38% of Americans wouldn’t buy Corona beer ‘under any circumstances’ because of the coronavirus.”
This is not true, but if the stat rings a bell, you might have seen it trending on Twitter or read this article. It was even referenced (and mocked) on Saturday Night Live Weekend Update. Unfortunately, the article by The Atlantic debunking the claim did not get the same kind of attention — sometimes the truth just isn’t as much fun.
That’s part of the trouble with fake news that goes viral. Even the best journalists and fact checkers can’t coax the genie back into the bottle.
What’s worse, misleading survey data like this clouds the news cycle with frivolous stats, and gets in the way of vital information that needs to be disseminated to the public.
Journalists should be able to count on PR professionals in the fight against the infodemic. I know they might not see us as allies and advocates for truth, and with good reason — too many PR firms are exploiting vulnerabilities and weaponizing their expertise for the other side.
Sources of misinformation take many forms and science can’t create a vaccine to protect us from them. Sometimes Patient Zero is a Reddit troll. Sometimes it’s a PR firm. I’m not an info-epidemiologist and I don’t have a cure, but at the very least, we can do a better job of holding those in power accountable for the lies and half-truths they tell, especially when those messages spread so widely, so easily.
To my fellow PR practitioners, let’s reclaim our profession in this era of misinformation. PRSA has a valuable code of ethics; we should be policing ourselves and holding ourselves accountable as an industry, and continue to be the stewards of interesting, fact-based stories.
As for the other side of the coin, reporters are rushed, newsrooms are getting thinned out, it’s easy to grab a quick story that you know will get shared. But here’s my plea to news orgs: Fact-check before rushing to be the first to publish, and have the humility to issue corrections when something slips through your bullshit filter.
The truth is, we will never eradicate fake news. But let’s fight like hell to tell the truth, and shine a light on the PR firms that don’t.
