Via the ever-vigilant Kevin Lynch at ComBlu, a not inexpensive Forrester report on social media suggests that “PR professionals are often in greater demand as social media experts in these areas. With these new earned media responsibilities, interactive marketers won't be able to hand off this type of activity to another team but rather should apply PR best practices to their own marketing programs.” Nothing focuses the mind on the importance of communications like a major crisis, and the tragedy in Japan has prompted some serious discussion of the need for better crisis preparedness and more transparency. Shin Tanaka of Fleishman-Hillard offers his perspective at our own site, while Neville Hobson has an interview with Ross Rowbury of Edelman, and Ken Makovsky has words of praise for Sony chief executive Howard Stringer’s response to the crisis. The government appears to be getting ready to sue a host of banks and/or banking executives for their actions in the years before the financial crisis. What’s interesting is that it is suing over activities that regulators knew about at the time, and ignored. This should sound alarm bells in corporate offices—and not only in the financial sector. If you’re counting on the negligence (or coziness) of regulators to get you off the hook, you’re playing with fire.