If you can make it, I hope you will join us. Here’s the reg form and here’s the description and the panel:

Navigating Uncharted Waters: How The Internet is Changing PR and Media Ethics

The rise of bloggers and other Internet-based social media, are roiling both the PR industry and the media. In the process, new ethical questions are emerging regarding how the Internet is changing the traditional roles of both journalists and PR professionals. Do online journalists adhere to the same ethical standards as their colleagues in traditional media? Do PR professionals have heightened ethical obligations when communicating directly with the public through blogs and other social media? What standards are emerging and which are still open for debate? We will hear from a panel of media and PR experts and probe ethical issues through real-world case studies.

Confirmed Panelists:

Jerry Ceppos, former Executive Editor, SJ Mercury News; currently a fellow in media ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Tom Formeski, editor, SiliconValleyWatcher.com

Jon Greer, media trainer and editor, 21stCenturyMediaRelations.com

Joel Postman, EVP, Eastwick Communications

An excerpt:

Dine, a contemporary American restaurant in Chicago, has been open for less than two years. But on one popular Web site, it is already rated half a star shy of Charlie Trotter’s.

How did Dine garner such favorable reviews? One thing that probably didn’t hurt: It fed many of the reviewers free. Last August, Dine spent about $1,500 on an event for members of Yelp, a Web site where consumers post reviews and rate restaurants. The nearly 100 members were treated to an open bar, duck roulade appetizers and red velvet cupcakes for dessert. As a bonus, they all received certificates for discounts on subsequent meals. The result: a torrent of favorable reviews on Yelp. Most reviewers mentioned that they attended a Yelp event, though few highlighted that the food and drink was free.

“I think if I was picking up the tab I wouldn’t enjoy it as much,” says Leigh Kelsey, a 28-year-old Chicago file clerk at a law firm who attended the event and posted positive comments on Yelp. A spokeswoman for Dine says attendees were not required to write reviews of any nature, positive or negative.

As online food sites become increasingly influential in the restaurant business, chefs and owners are plying bloggers with free meals to get good write-ups. Some are also posting favorable reviews about themselves on popular Web sites or becoming Internet scribes.

I think it’s safe to say at this point that the train has left the station on this subject. We will be seeing lots more versions of blogola, and fewer and fewer reasons why PR has to adhere to old media’s strict standards.

This is not de facto a bad thing. PR’s job is to influence the media. The media is changing, so PR has little choice but to change with it. Over time, media consumers will have to decide how important it is for their chosen media to aspire to a certain level of ethical behavior in gathering and reporting information. If media consumers don’t care about lax ethics, in other words, if media companies can make money without adhering to what had been thought of as appropriate ethical standards, then that is where we will end up, and PR will have to adapt. Simple as that.

Seems B-M has sent emails to players in the Internet space urging them to join a new industry group, Initiative for Competitive Online Marketplaces (www.i-comp.org). Turns out that Microsoft, which opposes the Google-DoubleClick deal, was the big backer behind the group.

From the Journal’s article:

In recent months, public-relations firm Burson-Marsteller pitched media outlets and Internet companies on what it said were the dangers of the deal, which would bolster Google’s already strong presence in online advertising. In the written pitches reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Burson cites the deal as part of a larger discussion of “fair and free competition” in Internet-search and privacy rights of consumers.

In Europe, Burson urged Internet companies to become signatories on an online petition for a more “transparent and competitive Internet,” according to the pitches. It directed the companies to a Web site, www.i-comp.org, and provided user names and passwords to log in.

The pitches cited a number of groups and an individual who had signed on to the effort. The pitches didn’t disclose that Burson was working for Microsoft, Google’s largest rival.

In the Observer story, the author of the emails to companies quickly admitted that B-M was working for Microsoft, while a Microsoft spokesperson was coy about the company’s relationship with B-M and the initiative.

No matter. By today, the ICOMP web site names Microsoft as a “partner” with B-M. I had never heard of any of this before reading about it in today’s Journal, so I don’t know what the ICOMP web site said yesterday. FWIW, kudos to B-M and Microsoft for reacting quickly and putting Microsoft’s name out front, rather than taking heat for several days and then doing it.

PS — check out the B-M home page — cool use of an avatar to give an intro speech about B-M.

Whatever else PRSA is doing, they did publish an interesting roundtable discusion by members of their Board of Ethics and Professional Standards regarding “How to ethically engage new media.” Here’s a sample of the conversation (arguably the most on-point section of the piece):

James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, APR, Fellow PRSA: During this discussion, our objective is to answer this question, “What are the most urgent or important ethical issues or questions facing public relations and new media?”

Robert D. Frause, APR, Fellow PRSA: Deception is high on the list of things that can happen in the new media environment. We need to pay close attention to how we distribute messages and who we distribute them for. This could apply to everything from blogs to podcasts to wikis, even on Web sites. Making sure we disclose who we’re working for is imperative, especially in the new media.

Keith V. Mabee, APR: Transparency is the watchword in the public domain . . . who’s the real source, so embedded intent and purported knowledge are clear to the audience.

Patricia A. Grey, APR: My greatest concern around social media is the issue of reputation management. Some people use social media to damage or ruin the reputation of a company or person. Managing a virtual attack on reputation is a real dilemma in a world where so many different sources of information are available on the Internet.

Patricia T. Whalen, Ph.D., APR: One of the most urgent things we as PR practitioners have to get our hands around is tracking what is being said about our organizations. There are literally millions of bloggers out there. How do we stay on top of it all? It’s critical that we are able to identify where things are being said about us and react quickly, so it doesn’t turn into a crisis that could destroy our reputation.

Linda Welter Cohen, APR: One of the main concerns I have is inaccurate information that is disseminated through new media by sources that are not credible or ethical. Unfortunately, our target audiences may believe this inaccurate information, which can be very damaging to our company’s or client’s reputation.

Another interesting idea floated at the end of the panel: that PRSA ought to be much more proactive and visible in telling the business community and the public in general where the organization stands on issues such as online ethics:

Frause: We definitely have a 100 percent responsibility to educate our members, but I also think we have a responsibility as one of the leaders in the communication business — whether it’s marketing, advertising or public relations — to have commentary with regard to communication in general. That’s a big mistake we’ve made over the years; we’ve never done a comprehensive editorial tour to say what we believe in, or what our ethics code is. It’s basically between us and the members, and I don’t think most business leaders know who we are or what we espouse. The business community needs to know where the Public Relations Society of America is with regard to ethics, whether it’s the new media or the old media.

It’s an outstanding starting point and something every agency (and corporate PR department) should simply clip and paste on the wall (does anyone do that anymore?). Or pass it around in an email. Whatever.

Ogilvy PR’s Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics

• We reach out to bloggers because we respect your influence and feel that we might have something that is “remarkable” which could be of interest to you and/or your audience.
• We will only propose blogger outreach as a tactic if it complements our overall strategy. We will not recommend it as a panacea for every social media campaign.
• We will always be transparent and clearly disclose who we are and who we work for in our outreach email.
• Before we email you, we will check out your blog’s About, Contact and Advertising page in an effort to see if you have blatantly said you would not like to be contacted by PR/Marketing companies. If so, we’ll leave you alone.
• If you tell us there is a specific way you want to be reached, we’ll adhere to those guidelines.
• We won’t pretend to have read your blog if we haven’t.
• In our email we will convey why we think you, in particular, might be interested in our client’s product, issue, event or message.
• We won’t leave you hanging. If your contact at Ogilvy PR is going out of town or will be unreachable, we will provide you with an alternate point of contact.
• We encourage you to disclose our relationship with you to your readers, and will never ask you to do otherwise.
• You are entitled to blog on information or products we give you in any way you see fit. (Yes, you can even say you hate it.)
• If you don’t want to hear from us again, we will place you on our Do Not Contact list – which we will share with the rest of the Ogilvy PR agency.
• If you are initially interested in the campaign, but don’t respond to one of our emails, we will follow up with you no more than once. If you don’t respond to us at all, we’ll leave you alone.
• Our initial outreach email will always include a link to Ogilvy PR’s Blog Outreach Code of Ethics.

Here’s the description:

Navigating Uncharted Waters: How The Internet is Changing PR and Media Ethics

The rise of bloggers and other Internet-based social media, are roiling both the PR industry and the media. In the process, new ethical questions are emerging regarding how the Internet is changing the traditional roles of both journalists and PR professionals. Do online journalists adhere to the same ethical standards as their colleagues in traditional media? Do PR professionals have heightened ethical obligations when communicating directly with the public through blogs and other social media? What standards are emerging and which are still open for debate? We will hear from a panel of media and PR experts and probe ethical issues through real-world case studies.

Panelists:

Jerry Ceppos, former Executive Editor, SJ Mercury News; currently a fellow in media ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

Tom Formeski, editor, SiliconValleyWatcher.com

Jon Greer, media trainer and editor, 21stCenturyMediaRelations.com

Joel Postman, EVP, Eastwick Communications and author of the MediaArtifacts blog

The panel will be on Thursday, September 6, 2007, 8:00 – 9:30 am at the offices of Cooley Godward Kronish, 3175 Hanover Street, Palo Alto
The session is being offered at no cost to PRSA chapter members and $15 for nonmembers.

The previously verbose Mr. Mackey issued the following terse statement:

“I sincerely apologize to all Whole Foods Market stakeholders for my error in judgment in anonymously participating on online financial message boards. I am very sorry and I ask our stakeholders to please forgive me.”

He’s had to shut down his blog, too. Boo-hoo.

****

Let’s go back to the online ethics question. Now that the dust has settled, it’s obvious that it was an ethical breach for Mackey to post anonymously online about his company. As a CEO, he has ethical, legal and practical obligations to Whole Foods’ many constituencies to act in a transparent and truthful manner.

But consider this question: where’s the line between ethical and unethical? For instance, if there’s a Whole Foods store on Second Life, and he has an avatar, does it have to represent him in a literal and transparent way? What if he’s in Second Life but doing other things not related to Whole Foods? Or, let’s say he was commenting anonymously on message boards about stocks other than Whole Foods and made reference to the food retailing business, or retail in general, where he is an industry expert. Should he immediately identify himself?

Questions to ponder.

Now that I’ve given it some more thought, let me unequivocally say that what Mr. Mackey did was just plain stupid. There’s really no justification for a CEO of a publicly traded company to use anonymity when making public comments about his company or his industry. It’s that simple.

I don’t care what Mr. Mackey says in his own defense (“I had fun doing it” and “I never intended any of those postings to be identified with me” — go here for the complete set of excuses) — it simply demonstrates that he is divorced from reality. I think his Board and perhaps the SEC should sanction him for his actions.

On to the lesson: today’s Journal has a follow-up story on the trend of CEO blogging, quoting my pal and CEO blogging expert Debbie Weil. It probes the subject of how and why CEOs blog and how they can avoid putting their foot in their mouth when writing quickly and with light editing. It got me thinking about how this relates to media training and message consistency.

The lesson is that corporate communicators who have been media trained, that is, trained on what they can and cannot say in public to benefit their company, will naturally be the best at blogging. Blogging, after all, is very much like being interviewed, only there’s no interviewer. On the flip side, corporate communicators who don’t know what to say or not say, and haven’t been oriented to how to use public communication channels, will make mistakes over and over, whether they are blogging or giving interviews to reporters.