New York Times - May 8, 2000
MEDIA TALK
In Public Relations, 25 Percent Admit to Lying
Pity the public relations industry. It has long battled its image as a cadre of hired guns who distort the truth, exaggerate and sometimes even lie.
And that part about the lying -- it may actually be true for one quarter of the industry.
Adam Leyland, the editor in chief of PR Week, a trade journal of the public relations industry, surveyed some 1,700 public relations executives about ethics in their industry. The survey, which was published in the May 1 edition of PR Week, revealed several things, not least of which was the statistic that turned into the article's doom-and-gloom headline: "One of out of four pros admits to lying on job."
"The industry is deeply concerned with ethics and truth-telling," Leyland said. "And yet it has a reputation for spinning and hype and straight out lying."
In the survey, 25 percent of the executives admitted they lied on the job, 39 percent said they had exaggerated the truth, and 44 percent said they felt uncertain of the ethics of a task they were asked to perform. And 62 percent said that they had felt compromised in their work, either by being told a lie by their client or by not having access to the full story.
"That statistic is the most significant contribution to conflict with journalists," Leyland said. "But I would really like to survey the world of businesspeople, or the world of journalists, and find out how many of them have lied."
Hundreds of reactions from public relations executives to the survey have poured in.
"Some of them have said they just want to resign from the industry and lie on a beach, examining their navel," he said. "I say, look at the bright side. If 25 percent told a lie, that means 75 percent did not."
-- ALEX KUCZYNSKI