However you describe this week’s debacle—sleazy, unethical, or just plain stupid—all of us in PR will pay for it with a sustained black eye and a loss of credibility.
The “Whisper-Gate” scandal that leaked out this week involving search-engine king Google, social media maverick Facebook, and storied public relations firm Burson-Marsteller should have every PR agency reexamining its ethics policy.
Before this incident, just about any agency would have started drooling if Facebook had called up to hire it for a media campaign. It’s Facebook, after all—weeks away from a multibillion-dollar IPO and known to anyone with an Internet connection.
Read the entire article at PR Daily.