- Full Text
- Scholarly Journal
Small Investors Return to the Street
Full text preview
Using disinformation to deceive an enemy or competitor can be condoned in wartime, but can never be justified in business dealings in the corporate world, according to military and corporate public affairs experts.
"If a corporation accepts the premise that its credibility is a priceless asset which must be guarded and protected, then there are no occasions to justify a company risking its credibility in a program of disinformation," asserted H.J. (Jerry) Dalton, Jr., APR, manager of corporate communications for the LTV Corporation in Dallas, TX, and former president of PRSA.
"I cannot accept or condone disinformation as a public relations tactic in the corporate world," added Dalton, speaking at a workshop titled "The Ethics of Disinformation" at the PRSA National Conference in November.
Dalton, a retired brigadier general once in charge of worldwide public affairs for the Air Force, added that a company which lies "risks losing the confidence of all its publics." He emphasized that any civilian public relations practitioner engaging in a disinformation campaign would be in violation of PRSAs Code of Professional Standards.
What should a company do when it's asked a question it doesn't want to answer for competitive or proprietary reasons? "The company should state that they will not discuss what they are doing and, then, give an honest reason why they have taken this seemingly hard-line decision," Dalton advised.
This tack, though, can be dangerous. "The media may speculate or go with partial, inaccurate or incomplete information they have received from other sources (sometimes employees)," Dalton explained. "That's a risk the company has to assume and live with."
BUSINESS IS NOT WAR
War is different than business in that "disinformation in war often saves lives," argued Captain Michael T. Sherman, director of the Navy Office of Information West, Los Angeles, CA. Sherman defended...