In this week's newsletter, Arun Sudhaman reports on the controversy over Washington, D.C.-based Fenton Communications--known for its representation of liberal causes--going to work for a Qatari group that is trying to turn public opinion against the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Fenton has come under fire from former Counselor's Academy chair Bruce Rubin, who believes its decision to work for a group that "portrays the U.S. or any of its close allies as an enemy."

We'll get to the specifics of this case in a second, but first it's important to look at the general principle here, since it comes up fairly frequently in our business.

Lawyers justify their work for unpopular causes, companies and individuals by pointing out that everyone is entitled to legal representation. As Rubin rightly points out, there is no similar entitlement to public relations counsel. PR people are under no professional obligation to represent causes they find abhorrent. But they are entitled to work for any cause, company or individual they choose. This seems to me to be a matter of personal conscience.)

The sole exception, I believe, would be when the State Department or some equivalent, raised an official objection--and even then I would argue that if a PR person believes a cause is just, he or she should be prepared to challenge the State Department view.

As I may have mentioned before, I am pretty much a First Amendment fundamentalist. There are few if any issues that do not benefit from a full and frank discussion and robust public debate. If PR people believe anything, they should believe that. It's the core principle of the profession.

Furthermore, I believe the core ethical issues of our profession are defined by what we do, not who we do it for.

It is quite possible to do ethical public relations for clients whose ethics are questionable. Rubin, for example, asks whether it would be right to do PR for a "Charles Manson-type mass murderer." It seems to me that if this Manson type wished to apologize sincerely to victims, make some kind of restitution, or educate others to seek mental help when they start hearing voices, then a PR person would be well within his or her rights to take the account.

Similarly, it is quite possible to do unethical PR for a client with the noblest motives. Lying is wrong, whether it is done on behalf of a giant oil company or an environmental group.

In the case of this Qatari group, there is no allegation that Fenton has done or said anything dishonest.

Indeed, the issue in question seems to me to be an almost classical example of one on which reasonable people can disagree. The United Nations, for example, has called for an end to the Gaza blockade. Would working for the UN be "unethical"?

It's important to differentiate between attacks on the U.S., or one of its allies; and attacks on a specific policy of the U.S. and its allies. Companies hire PR firms to attack government policies (environmental regulation, trade policy and more) all the time. If a group wanted to hire a PR firm to oppose the invasion of Iraq or the war in Afghanistan, it should be entitled to do so, and any PR person who agrees with that view should feel free to offer professional counsel to such a group.

Bruce Rubin has a right to criticize anyone who advocates a position with which he disagrees. And Fenton Communications has just as much right to argue a cause it believes to be a just one, to try to stimulate and influence public debate around that cause. That's what public relations does, and should continue to do.

The media's predictable objections notwithstanding, I don't see anything egregiously wrong with the new Department of Defense guidelines for interaction with the press, issued in the wake of the series of massive indiscretions on the part of General Stanley McChrystal and his staff that led to an extremely unflattering Rolling Stone article and the General's subsequent dismissal from his role at the U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

Reporters expressed discomfort with Defense Secretary Robert Gates insistence that the Pentagon's public affairs unit be notified "prior to any interviews or any other means of media and public engagement with possible national or international implications." At a press conference after Gates' memo was made public, reporters made the case that almost every story they worked on had "national or international implications" and suggested that the new guidelines contradicted the Obama administration's pledge to be more transparent than its predecessors.

There is no reason why the involvement of Defense Department public affairs professionals should mean less transparency. In fact, there is no reason it should not mean greater transparency. Talking to those who have experience working with the military, the general feeling seems to be that PR people are more often advocating for better communication. Of course, that advocacy stops short of the kind of colorful, entertaining indiscretion that McChrystal's staff engaged in, the kind of indiscretion that destroys careers and drives magazine sales.

But Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters: "The bottom line is if we do this properly you will hardly notice the impact." And Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, makes it clear that the military brass understands the importance of good media relations: ""We need to tell our story. It needs to be done well. It needs to be told smartly. We need to learn the right lessons, not the wrong ones."

The new policy--if it is implemented responsibly and with common sense--seems like an entirely reasonable response to a public relations faux pas.

Still wondering why the mainstream media are having difficulty adapting to the social media world? Check out a thoroughly confused column from the Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander, in the wake of the Post's precipitous decision to fire a columnist because his political views became known.

On the one hand, Alexander says, the solution to any confusion about reporters who also write opinion pieces, or write opinionated blogs is to be "completely transparent about what people do . . . and completely transparent about where people stand."

On the other hand, those in traditional reporting positions should remain "nonpartisan, unbiased and free from slant in their presentation in the paper and in any other public forum. There should be no appearance of conflict."

Am I the only one who thinks that those two statements are contradictory? In the first, Alexander is advocating complete transparency, a principle I support (though I'm not sure how practice complete transparency is. In the second, however, he is arguing for complete opacity: under no circumstances should readers know the political views of people in "traditional reporting positions."

Unless those people have no political views--something that's virtually inconceivable--that surely requires hiding those views from readers? Surely any attempt to eliminate the "appearance of conflict" must necessarily involve either concealing the real views of reporters or pretending they don't have any? That's the very opposite of transparency.

Perhaps it's time for the Post and other mainstream media outlets to start treating readers like adults--rather than patronizing them, as the headline to this column does--and to acknowledge that reporters have political views just like everyone else. Preventing a reporter from attending an environmental rally, for example, doesn't make that reporter any less committed to the cause of environmentalism; it merely obfuscates the truth.

Let's be transparent about that--and then judge the quality of a reporter's work on its merits, rather than on how well he or she conceals his true beliefs.

I mentioned last week that I was surprised that so many public relations people were enthusiastic about participating in the annual ad industry awards event at Cannes. For one thing, the event is opening itself up to PR people (not coincidentally) at a time when advertising is losing its central role in the marketing mix; for another, it is unlikely, because of its focus on marketing, ever to represent the breadth of what public relations people can bring to the corporate realm.

It would disingenuous, however, to ignore the one very obvious benefit of attending the event: the ability to mix and mingle with marketing thought leaders who represent--and help choose PR firms for--some of the most significant global brands. (Of course that benefit does not extend to the awards competition; Cannes does not allow clients to serve on the awards jury.)

But if PR people want a global forum at which they can mingle with clients, perhaps it's time to consider whether it might not be better to create their own than to piggyback on an existing event, the focus of which is far from conducive to the particular strengths of this industry. The time--with social media creating a larger and more central role for the PR discipline--could hardly be more propitious.

With its focus on advertising--and on creativity, as defined by advertising people, it is unlikely that Cannes will ever focus on the topics that are of most pressing concern to public relations people (and ought to be equally high on the agenda of marketing folks). Among them, off the top of my head:
• The growing convergence of brand marketing and corporate reputation;
• The need to harness employees as brand ambassadors;
• The need to protect brands from and during crisis;
• The use of social media to build consumer relationships rather than as another communication channel;
• The need to develop new metrics that emphasize engagement and advocacy over reach and frequency;

In other words, it's not difficult to imagine an agenda that addresses the most significant issues facing the PR and marketing communities, and would attract the most important corporate communications professionals as well as brand marketers.

The question is whether the PR industry has the confidence--at this time of unprecedented opportunity--to create such an event, or whether it will continue to ride the coat-tails of an ever-weaker ad industry.

The large agencies--they are the ones with the money and the motivation to make something like this happen, partnering with groups like the Arthur W. Page Society and the European Association of Communications Directors--need to ask themselves two questions: "If not us, who? If not now, when?"

Peter Sandman has another indispensable column at his website, this one focused on the importance of empathy, particularly in times of crisis--and the obstacles to achieving it.

The article is particularly apropos as we watch the senior leadership at BP struggle to engage with the victims of the Gulf Oil spill, but anyone who has worked with senior management during a crisis will recognize the barriers to empathic communication: managers who believe their success is proof that they know how to empathize; the belief that being right is more important than being empathic; the reluctance to empathize with people who are critical of the organization, often is less than circumspect terms.

But his most interesting point, I think, concerns the way in which executives' egos can get in the way of sensible strategy.

"I think the main thing wrong with corporate capitalism is insufficient preoccupation with profit," he says, somewhat counter-intuitively. But his explanation certainly resonates with me: "Faced with a choice between a path forward that nurtures profit at the expense of self-esteem versus a path forward that nurtures self-esteem at the expense of profit, most corporate managers at every level choose self-esteem, and then make up stories to convince themselves they're focusing on the bottom line."

I think there's a pretty compelling case to be made that one of the most important roles a public relations advisor can play is persuading the CEO to subjugate his ego to the good of the company, to impose empathy on the company's communications even when (especially when) no one else is feeling particularly empathic.

Hill & Knowlton's Paul Taaffe, who served as president of the jury for the Cannes PR Lions this year, has issued a plea for public relations people to get more involved in the annual ad industry event, and for the event to consider a name change to make it more inclusive.

According to Taaffe: "The advertising industry is eating our lunch at these awards and the PR industry has to raise its game. There was a big increase in entries to the PR lions category overall but the number of entries from PR agencies was actually down."

I can certainly understand why Cannes expanded its awards categories a couple of years ago to include PR. The ad industry is struggling to remain relevant at a time when digital and social media make inauthentic, one-way communication less appealing and less credible, and so the festival needs to broaden its horizons.

At the same time, I can understand why PR agencies have been reluctant to engage. Unless the industry is still suffering from a massive inferiority complex, why go out of its way to seek the approval of the advertising community at precisely the time advertising is dying? And the winning campaigns in the first two years have both been basically publicity stunts, suggesting that the competition has a fairly limited--and patronizing--view of what PR can and should deliver.

Taaffe's solution is to change the name: "Cannes Lions is no longer just an advertising festival. Good creative ideas can come from anybody but the different disciplines have grown up for a good reason and it is misleading to group all of these under the 'advertising' umbrella."

That's an intriguing idea. The competition has expanded to include digital and social media, and categories such as crisis communications, public affairs and employee communications (although no awards were presented in those categories due to the lack of quality entries).

But the folks at Cannes continue to see public relations as a subset of, or an alternative to, advertising. The reality is that advertising is a tool that can be used to achieve public relations objectives, one vehicle--and an increasingly limited one--for managing relations between an organization and its public.

The deeper reality is that advertising is a marketing discipline and that public relations is a management discipline. And it seems unlikely that a competition so long managed by advertising people and dominated by advertising agencies is ever going to understand that difference and so will continue to treat public relations as a synonym for media relations or publicity.

As long as it does, you can't blame PR people for their reluctance to engage.

There's something encouraging about the fact that more than 200 public relations and PR measurement professionals came together in Barcelona last week for a debate on the guiding principles of PR evaluation. And the fact that the < A HREF="http://www.amecorg.com/amec/index.asp"> seven principles up for debate were agreed with overwhelming support is certainly cause for celebration.

But (I'm sure you could sense a "but" coming) I would have liked to see the discussion begin with what I believe should be the first principle of public relations measurement and evaluation, which is that the ultimate measure of public relations is its impact on relationships.

There are methodologies out there for measuring the strength of organizational relationships--most notably those that measure the number of brand advocates and the number of brand detractors. And there is plenty of evidence that stronger relationships correlate strongly to better business results.

To a certain extent, this is touched on in principle five, "measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results," which included in the subtext plenty of discussion about changes in attitude and behavior. But it would have been nice, at a time when concepts such as engagement and advocacy are gaining currency among marketers, to have stated explicitly that engagement and advocacy are precisely what PR can and should deliver.

The most contentious part of the debate that took case in Barcelona last Thursday designed to establish "seven principles" for public relations measurement involved the continued use of "advertising value equivalency" as a way of establishing the value of a public relations campaign.

I must admit I was disappointed and disturbed that the presentations leading up to the debate, from representatives of the Institute for Public Relations, the PRSA, ICCO and AMEC (the Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication), focused so heavily on AVE; it was like going to a convention of evolutionary biologists and hearing a discussion of the merits of creationism.

For the record, advertising value equivalency does not even measure the value of advertising (just its cost), so how it can purport to measure the value of PR is a complete mystery to me. The fact that the client paid for a full page of advertising is not evidence that your ad campaign achieved its objectives; securing a full page of editorial coverage is not evidence that your PR efforts are achieving anything meaningful.

As it turned out, the overwhelming majority of the delegates agreed. Almost all the criticism of Barcelona Principle number three--"advertising value equivalents do not measure the value of PR and do not inform future activity"--came from those who felt it didn't go far enough.

One delegate made the most salient point when he indicated that other professionals (he was an engineer, I believe) have an obligation to tell clients when something doesn't work; if PR people and PR measurement professionals know that AVE is essentially meaningless, it's pretty unethical to deliver AVEs to clients--even if clients demand them. A responsible professional would make it clear to the client that he or she is wasting time and money.

I know many clients--particularly marketing clients--have an unhealthy attachment to AVEs. I know this because about half of the entries we receive in the SABRE Awards include some variation on AVE as a measure of success. But part of the reason marketers continue to ask for AVE is because PR people who know better are either too lazy or too cowardly to push back and tell them they're wrong.

Maybe with the Barcelona principles as cover, those PR people will find pushing back a little easier.

It has been more than 25 years since I have my first speech predicting that management consulting firms would one day go into direct competition with PR firms. I guess the jury is still out on whether I was wrong, or simply further ahead of my time than I suspected... although with each passing year, the former becomes ever more probable.

Having said that, management consultancies have made occasional forays into our field: Arthur D. Little hired a former Hill & Knowlton exec to launch a crisis consulting practice; PricewaterhouseCoopers formed a reputation consulting practice and its leader, Glen Peters, wrote a pretty good book of reputation management; and of course more recently FTI Consulting acquired FD in an attempt to find synergies between its change management work and FD's strategic communications expertise.

And now McKinsey has announced that it is getting into the public relations consulting business, through a joint venture--called NM Incite--with market research company Nielsen, which owns BuzzMetrics.

The new partnership will focus on social media. Nielsen will provide the data, and McKinsey will provide strategic counsel focused on three areas: measuring and improving marketing effectiveness, product launch optimization and customer service experience.

I've argued long and hard that the emergence of social media provides an opportunity for public relations people to move into a more central role in marketing and management. But as companies come to understand the game-changing potential of social media, might it also provide the motivation for management consultants to compete more directly with PR agencies?