Fulcrum Blog

I’ve been remiss in writing a follow-up to this post about my recent accreditation in public relations. In fact, I’ve been remiss about posting at all. No need for excuses; apparently life has just gotten in the way. But I can’t ignore this … especially after spending the last few months of my life immersed in the ideals of my profession and the rigorous process of classes, studying, preparing, presenting and test-taking that we demand in order to be accredited.  The response from the Public Relations Society of America is on point. Ethics is of utmost importance in legitimate public relations. And one’s credibility is sacred. In fact, media relations makes up a total of 5% of the weighted accreditation process, while ethics and law is 15%, and research, planning, implementation and evaluation is 30%. However, it’s sad that most people won’t hear those things, except of course those who already know them. It’s sad that so many people see public relations as “spin,” manipulation and press agentry. It’s sad that even after all of the strides we’ve made in our industry, with the majority of us being hard-working professionals that spend our careers building and maintaining relationships with key publics for our organizations and clients, that we get such little respect. Needless to say, I’m proud of my own success in becoming accredited. And whether or not Andrew Cohen thinks it’s an achievement, I know what it took to get it and so do my honest, loyal and professional colleagues.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 3:04 pm and is filed under public relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.