This is my profession. Oh, alright. It’s my trade. But I still think it’s a business capable of integrity, honour and decency.
Working at Chernobyl in 1995 was an amazing experience. I was the only westerner living in the new town of Slavutych that was built to replace the abandoned city of Pripyat. In addition, I was the only westerner working full time at the power station. This gave me an insight into a closed world that was as thrilling as it was unique. Read on ›
We PRs cannot avoid philosophical matters because, as Martin Sandbu says in his new book Just Business – Arguments in Business Ethics, decisions made by business have consequences for other people. Read on ›
Public relations professionals don’t really do philosophy: we’re in the people business, and sound-bites suit us better than Immanuel Kant’s Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785). As for our clients, well, we’re bound to note their lust for the latest guru-speak getting lift-off from an airport bookshop. Read on ›
In commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant explosion, here is a review of Voices From Chernobyl, The Oral History Of A Nuclear Disaster, by Svetlana Alexievich (translated by Keith Gessen) Dalkey Archive Press, 2005. Read on ›
Categories: Big oil / CSR reality check / History of PR / PR issues / Trust and reputations
10 February 2011
One comment
This essay first appeared late last year in A Sorry State: Self-denigration in British Culture, edited by Peter Whittle with a foreword by the historian Michael Burleigh. I’m very grateful to Peter Whittle for allowing me to share it with you here. Read on ›
In Egypt the authorities have imposed curfews, restricted access to the internet, Twitter and Facebook. Even mobile phones are not working properly. That’s what states do in a crisis; close-down the streets and cut communication links. Let’s explore this some more. Read on ›
In 2006 I exposed the myth-making of an important, Swiss state-funded, UN sponsored website Chernobyl.info. As part of my work for the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster I’ve revisited the issue and discovered things have got worse. Read on ›
I love Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer, not least because it offers year-on-year comparative data. But its findings should come with a health warning. Read on ›
There are two media hullabaloos resonating right now: Business Secretary Vince Cable was stripped of some decision-making powers after telling undercover journalists he had “declared war” on Rupert Murdoch; WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange now claims The Guardian has betrayed his secrets. It makes me wanna chant “long live the media!” Read on ›
Jonathan Porritt’s, Britain’s leading environmental campaigner, speech to the Royal Society in London this week is entitled The Growth Fetish and the Death of Environmentalism. Here’s why PRs should take him seriously, if only to debunk him. Read on ›
