Think back to the long, hot days of summer. Remember the biggest talking point in PR blogging? It was a double-barrelled fusillade launched from the Australian winter - the claim that ‘Astroturfing is evil’. My link is to Trevor Cook’s blog, but the inspiration for this campaign came from Forward’s own Paull Young.

And who could disagree with them? Of course we all believe in what we do, and want to believe that the public relations we practice is respectable, legitimate, open and ethical. So why not distance our brand of professional PR from the disreputable end of the business? How hard can that be?

I like Paull; I admire Trevor. Yet I only felt able to lend lukewarm support to their campaign (my comment on Trevor’s post hints at some reservations, though my defence of a royal walkabout was perhaps not universally compelling.)

Now Edelman stands indicted of this great evil. (Edelman, remember, is the global cheerleader for ‘the new PR’ and an active headhunter of the best blogging talent including the UK’s Stephen Davies and Forward’s managing editor Erin Caldwell.) Ashley Imsand has already commented at Forward on the Wal-Mart blogging furore.

So where do I now stand on astroturfing and on the crucial issue of transparency?

>I don’t feel comfortable saying this - and I have made my own bid for a piece of the moral high ground in a previous Forward post - but I never felt able to condemn astroturfing as an absolute evil. This despite the fact that my conscience is clear on this front - I’m not sufficiently clever or subtle ever to have carried it off as a PR practitioner.

Here’s where my conscience is less clear. As a PR practitioner I have:

• Written news releases and case studies that appeared with only minor editing in the national media - unattributed to the PR source
• Submitted newspaper articles that appeared under another person’s byline
• Written speeches and sound bytes in another person’s name
• Provided photography and video footage without seeking payment or asking for a credit

Nothing exceptional there? That’s just the point. There’s so much of everyday public relations that is necessarily opaque and incapable of being transparent. Consider this. What happens to democracy if our political leaders blame their speechwriters for a lack of policies? What happens to the credibility of an independent media if it has to name its many PR sources?

And yet, my examples are drawn predominantly from media relations, an area of public relations that is perhaps more manipulative and less transparent than most. Surely the advent of the Web - and above all Web 2.0 - means that we can bypass media channels and engage genuinely in public relations? Surely by this standard Edelman’s efforts on behalf of Wal-Mart should have been more transparent? Richard Edelman has acknowledged as much and I accept his sincerity.

Yet transparency cannot be the only ethical measure. If it were, I might have believed everything my teenaged ears heard on Radio Moscow (which broadcast many ‘letters’ from alleged communist sympathisers in Britain - how did they know where to write to in those Cold War years before email?). Radio Moscow was transparent propaganda - but far from persuasive public relations on behalf of the former Soviet Union. Yet the BBC World Service - funded to this day by Britain’s Foreign Office - still sounds to my ears like objective journalstic truth. Others must find it objectionable British propaganda.

So a literal adherence to transparency brings public relations in a full circle back to the age of propaganda. Or drives it straight back into advertising (unpersuasive maybe, expensive certainly, but undoubtedly transparent).

There must be an alternative; there must be a place for public relations discourse somewhere between propaganda and advertising. To me it’s in the belief that there’s more of a choice than between truth and propaganda, between good and evil.

Take Wal-Mart as an example. (I have no direct experience here: Wal-Mart is only represented in the UK through its ASDA subsidiary). On my little indirect knowledge of this business, I would find it possible to argue that its scale and aggressive pricing make it bad for communities, for competition and for suppliers.

But I would find it equally easy to argue that Wal-Mart is successful because millions of consumers have chosen - rather than being coerced - to shop there. And that its success generates direct and indirect jobs, taxation and community benefits.

This very debate seems to me to be the essence of public relations - the pursuit of public legitimacy for a business or for an interest. It suggests why public relations is distinct from marketing and suggests why public relations needs persuasive practitioners ready to engage with the issues (exemplified, I believe, by Edelman).

For those unimpressed by my moral relativism, then I confess that I can only see through a glass, darkly. But I’m still looking forward to an era when public relations can facilitate the discussion of difficult issues face to face. And where face to face is not possible, then let the discussion proceed on blogs.

Note: Forward’s Managing Editor, Erin Caldwell, is an employee of Edelman. Because of this, she turned responsibility for editing and posting this post over to me - Paull Young

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