One of the biggest challenges for a public relations professional is learning to handle the word ‘spin’ and its multi-hued connotations. Shane Jacob expresses his frustration with the term and laments the fact that recent events have only served to lower the image of ‘the image keepers’.
I hate the term ‘Spin Doctors’. But, more often than not, it is associated with people in the Public Relations profession - people like me. And I really don’t like that!
The corruption debate rages on in the country - on the heels of the media onslaught against the ruling party and, in particular, the Prime Minister. I don’t blame the media. There have been a series of scams and the Prime Minister who was always positioned as an honest politician (clearly an oxymoron these days) has lost credibility and doesn’t seem up to the task of maintaining a clean government.
With all the negative press, the narrative on the PM and his image has shifted in tone. Among the many media stories that questioned his uprightness, this one from the Mirror was especially blunt: “The PM’s Teflon-coated integrity has finally been challenged. Was he really as pure and sacrosanct as he wanted us to believe? The Congress spin doctors may go into overdrive trying to re-establish his image (that’s the only thing left for them now, anyways!) but the perception has surely been damaged.”
Yes, as PR professionals, we do have a job to maintain the image of our clients and I hate the fact that circumstances like this reinforce the impression that PR pros just “spin” information to suit their client. In this case, whoever is counselling the ruling party clearly seems to be trying their best to salvage a sinking ship. In most cases, the advice would be to come clean, acknowledge responsibility, and do the right thing.
With the client being a political party, I doubt that the PR professional here could really make that happen but I wonder if he or she advised them on the way forward. I mean, if the PM’s clean image is hanging in the balance, pleading ignorance and inability to manage one’s team is still negligence and does absolutely nothing for that image.
Coming after the 2G scam and the role a certain PR professional played in manipulating the outcome there, this issue further damages the profession’s image. There is no specific industry body who will defend the profession; no representative for the rest who will stand up and say that these instances were not, by any definition, good PR.
Instead we are labelled as spin doctors. A PR professional in India is just seen as a person who wines and dines the media and gets “good” coverage in the paper. There are not many who really understand the strategic role it can play and not many PR firms who wish to rise up and play that role.
I guess I do come across as jaded and extremely disillusioned about the profession now. I will get over this in time and work on doing the right thing by my clients and my profession. Hopefully, in the long run, this will help to change the way PR and its practitioners are perceived.
For now, the only bright spot is that I can tell my folks that their dream of me becoming a doctor may have come true!
Tags: clean image, client, corruption, politician, PR advice, Public Relations, spin doctor
exquisitely written..an excellent read for all PR pros.