Jaffe's Straw Man Argument Against PR's Digital Leadership Role

You might expect a writer at Adweek to make the case that public relations people should not "own" social media--just as you might expect the editor of a public relations newsletter to make the case that public relations people absolutely should--but even so this article by crayon's Joseph Jaffe seems spectacularly disingenuous to me.

Actually, Jaffe sets up a major straw man, arguing that "The PR business is really no better and no worse than the digital one when it comes to social credentials. With its claim of being champions of "earned media," it tacked the word "relations" onto blogger, lumped it together with "media relations" and "journalist relations," and somehow went unchallenged.

"Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying PR shouldn't be at the table. I'm just questioning how "relations" between corporations and journalists equate with real people hanging out with other real people."

Which seems like a good argument for why media relations people should not own social media, but rather evades the issue that public relations--as the name rather explicitly suggests--is about helping corporations connect with the public, which the last time I checked was made up entirely of "real people."

Jaffe goes on to argue that "whereas the digital space has very little claim to the 'physical' world and hasn't proven itself in the virtual space, the PR industry resides more comfortably in the physical world, with a superficial grasp of the digital space and an anemic understanding of the virtual one."

I have said it before and I'll say it again: if your business is helping to build relationships between organizations and people, I'm not sure that the principles to be followed in the virtual world are very different from those to be followed in the real world. Jaffe himself cites "authenticity, transparency or peer-to-peer collaboration"--to which I'd add sincerity, integrity, credibility and a few more, all of which are fundamental tenets of good public relations.