PRSA soc of am

==<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America</a>
The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), was

established in 1947 and is the peak professional association for

U.S.-based public relations practitioners (though it is making inroads

internationally given US dominance in the Public Relations field).

Additionally, PRSA has a number of local affiliates across the United

States (and internationally) that offer their own activities and

services, as well as a student organization; the Public Relations

Student Society of America (PRSSA) which has 255 chapters nationwide.

In addition to offering professional advancement, networking, and

ethics guidelines, PRSA offers the "Accredited in Public Relations"

(APR) certification.

PRSA has over 20,000 members and 114 chapters, which include

international affiliates. It is estimated, however, that less than 10%

of public relations practitioners in the US belong to PRSA.

<h2>Contents</h2>

</div></div><div id="toc" class="toc">

<ul><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#PRSA_Statements">1 PRSA Statements</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#Personnel">2 Personnel</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#Case_studies">3 Case studies</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#Contact_information">4 Contact information</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#SourceWatch_resources">5 SourceWatch resources</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#External_links">6 External links</a>

<ul><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-7"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#PRSA_documents">6.1 PRSA documents</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-8"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#Articles">6.2 Articles</a></li></ul>

</li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-9"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#Articles_and_resources">7 Articles and resources</a>

<ul><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-10"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#Related_SourceWatch_articles">7.1 Related SourceWatch articles</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-11"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#References">7.2 References</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-12"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#External_resources">7.3 External resources</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-13"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#External_articles">7.4 External articles</a></li></ul>

</li></ul>

</div>

<h2>PRSA Statements</h2>

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has issued a news release calling on the presidential campaigns of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/John_McCain" title="John McCain">John McCain</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Barack_Obama" title="Barack Obama">Barack Obama</a> to "uphold the highest standards of ethical practice in every facet of their campaign communications." PRSA CEO <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jeffrey_Julin" title="Jeffrey Julin">Jeffrey Julin</a>

is offering himself for interviews as "a recognized expert in

communications ethics." Since assuming the helm of the PRSA in January,

Julin has been trying to improve the industry's ethical reputation. In

June, for example, he posted a platitudinous statement on YouTube in

response to a sarcastic CBS news commentary about <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Scott_McClellan" title="Scott McClellan">Scott McClellan</a>'s book on his misadventures as a spokesman for the Bush administration. Julin is also president of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/MGA_Communications" title="MGA Communications">MGA Communications</a>, a PR firm whose clients include <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Americans_for_Balanced_Energy_Choices" title="Americans for Balanced Energy Choices" class="mw-redirect">Americans for Balanced Energy Choices</a>,

a front group for the coal industry that is "targeting the public,

politicians, interest groups, and the media" during this year's election

campaign as part of what the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Washington_Post" title="Washington Post">Washington Post</a>

called a "$35 million campaign in primary and caucus states to rally

public support for coal-fired electricity and to fuel opposition to

legislation that Congress is crafting to slow climate change." <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#cite_note-1">[1]</a>

On January 11, 2005, PRSA responded to the story of Armstrong Williams'

non-disclosure of his receipt of $240,000 from the Department of

Education for advocating for the "No Child Left Behind" program with an <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.prsa.org/_News/leaders/disclosure0111.asp">official statement</a>.

As with other PRSA statements on recent events deemed illegal by the

Government Accountability Office, the official statement names neither

Williams nor Ketchum (the public relations firm that brokered the deal)

though it does note that Williams should have disclosed his arrangement

and notes that such a practices are ". . . clearly contrary to the PRSA

Member Code of Ethics, which requires that public relations

professionals engage in open, honest communications, and fully disclose

sponsors or financial interests involved in any paid communications

activities." To date, no one at either Ketchum or Fleischman-Hillard

(the two major firms implicated in the "Paylagate" scandals) has been

sanctioned by PRSA for violations of the PRSA Code of Ethics. It should

be noted that both firms have historically been financial backers of

PRSA.

<h2>Personnel</h2>

From their website: <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.prsa.org/aboutUs/HQStaffDirectory/executive.html">[1]</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.prsa.org/supportfiles/news/viewNews.cfm?pNewsID=1381">[2]</a>

<ul><li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jeffrey_Julin" title="Jeffrey Julin">Jeffrey Julin</a>, Chair and CEO</li><li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/William_Murray" title="William Murray">William Murray</a>, President and COO</li></ul>

Former staff:

<ul><li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Judith_T._Phair" title="Judith T. Phair">Judith T. Phair</a></li><li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rhoda_Weiss&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Rhoda Weiss (page does not exist)">Rhoda Weiss</a>,</li></ul>

<h2>Case studies</h2>

<ul><li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tough_Issues,_Tough_World" title="Tough Issues, Tough World">Tough Issues, Tough World</a></li><li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Survey_Shows_Most_PR_People_Still_Won%27t_Admit_Lying" title="Survey Shows Most PR People Still Won't Admit Lying">Survey Shows Most PR People Still Won't Admit Lying</a></li><li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/The_Public_Relations_Society_of_America%27s_Code_of_Ethics" title="The Public Relations Society of America's Code of Ethics">The Public Relations Society of America's Code of Ethics</a></li></ul>

<h2>Contact information</h2>

The Public Relations Society of America

33 Maiden Lane, 11th Fl.

New York, NY 10038-5150

Phone: 212-460-1400

Fax: 212-995-0757

Web:<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://www.prsa.org/">http://www.prsa.org/</a>

<h2>SourceWatch resources</h2>

<ul><li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_relations_associations" title="Public relations associations">Public relations associations</a></li><li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/PR_ethics" title="PR ethics">PR ethics</a></li><li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/The_Public_Relations_Institute_of_Australia%27s_Code_of_Ethics" title="The Public Relations Institute of Australia's Code of Ethics">The Public Relations Institute of Australia's Code of Ethics</a></li></ul>

<h2>External links</h2>

<h3>PRSA documents</h3>

<ul><li>Public Relations Society of America, "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.prsa.org/_News/press/pr051005.asp">PRSA President and CEO Judith T. Phair To Testify During Senate Committee Hearing On Pending Video News Release Legislation</a>", Media Release, May 10, 2005.</li><li>Public Relations Society of America, "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://media.prsa.org/pressKit_download.cfm?item_id=13">Executive, Congressional and Consumer Attitudes Toward the Media, Marketing and Public Relations Profession Survey Highlights</a>", November 2005.</li><li>Harris Interactive Public Relations Research, "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://media.prsa.org/pressKit_download.cfm?item_id=11">Executive, Congressional and Consumer Attitudes Toward Media, Marketing and the Public Relations Profession</a>", Public Relations Society of America, November 2005.</li></ul>

<h3>Articles</h3>

<ul><li>Jack O'Dwyer, "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0829comm_od_openletter.htm">Open Letter to the PRSA Ethics Board</a>", August 29, 2006.</li><li>Press release, "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.prsa.org/supportfiles/news/viewNews.cfm?pNewsID=1381">PRSA reacts to departure of Karen Hughes, encourages State Department to continue strategic communications efforts overseas</a>," Public Relations Society of America, November 6, 2007.</li><li>Rick Laney, "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.thedailytimes.com/article/20071219/NEWS/553859051">PR executive addresses crisis communications for FEMA</a>," The Daily Times (Tennessee), December 19, 2007.</li></ul>

<h2>Articles and resources</h2>

<h3>Related SourceWatch articles</h3>

<ul><li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SourceWatch:Help" title="SourceWatch:Help">SourceWatch:Help</a></li></ul>

<h3>References</h3>

<ol class="references"><li id="cite_note-1">
</li></ol><div id="mw-content-text" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr" lang="en"><ol class="references"><li id="cite_note-1"> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://media.prsa.org/article_display.cfm?article_id=1206">"Communications Professionals Challenge McCain and Obama on Ethics"</a>, Public Relations Society of America, September 10, 2008.</li></ol>

<h3>External resources</h3>

<ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents">Wikipedia help</a></li></ul>

<h3>External articles</h3>

<ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14434/">Knowledge Enhanced Searching on the Web</a></li></ul>

</div>

             </font><div id="catlinks" class="catlinks"><div id="mw-normal-catlinks" class="mw-normal-catlinks"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Special:Categories" title="Special:Categories">Categories</a>: </font><ul><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="5"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Category:Public_relations_industry_associations" title="Category:Public relations industry associations">Public relations industry associations</a></font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="5"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Category:Fake_News" title="Category:Fake News">Fake News</a></font></li></ul></div></div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">==<br /></font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">

<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Relations_Society_of_America"> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Relations_Society_of_America</a>The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501%28c%29_organization" title="501(c) organization">nonprofit</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_association" title="Trade association">trade association</a> for public relations professionals headquartered in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City" title="New York City">New York City</a>.

It was founded in 1947 by combining the American Council on Public

Relations and the National Association of Public Relations Councils.

That year it had its first annual conference and award ceremony. In the

1950s and 1960s, the society created its code of conduct, accreditation

program and a student society called the Public Relations Student

Society of America. In the 1970s and 1980s, its membership attained a

stronger female demographic and the society had its first female

Presidents. PRSA created a definition of public relations in 1982, which

was updated with a crowd-sourced version in 2011.

PRSA is governed by a Leadership Assembly that consists of delegates

representing its membership, a board of directors and various committees

and task forces. Positions are elected and served on a volunteer basis.

PRSA hosts an accreditation program, industry awards, networking events

and a code of conduct. PRSA also advocates on behalf of the public

relations industry for changes in education and for the credibility of

the profession.

<h2>Contents</h2>

</div></div>

<ul><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#History">1 History</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#Organization">2 Organization</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#Services">3 Services</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#Research_and_advocacy">4 Research and advocacy</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#See_also">5 See also</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#References">6 References</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Relations_Society_of_America#External_links">7 External links</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7">
</li></ul>

===

Our guest blogger is <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/experts/HendricksBracken.html">Bracken Hendricks</a>, a Senior Fellow with American Progress Action Fund and the founding Executive Director of the Apollo Alliance.

<img src="/35ce9b99-2e51-5479-bede-c9e37e1d0a0f.jpg"/>In today’s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/01/AR2008060101913.html">Washington Post</a> and a parallel piece in <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/139454">Newsweek</a>, Robert J. Samuelson gets it wildly wrong on federal policy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, parroting a litany of falsehoods and misrepresentations concerning the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade legislation <a href="http://www.americanprogressaction.org/progressreport/2008/06/pr20080602">now being debated</a> in the Senate. He writes:

The chief political virtue of cap-and-trade — a complex scheme to reduce greenhouse gases — is its complexity. This allows its environmental supporters to shape public perceptions in essentially deceptive ways. Cap-and-trade would act as a tax, but it’s not described as a tax. It would regulate economic activity, but it’s promoted as a “free market” mechanism. Finally, it would trigger a tidal wave of influence-peddling, as lobbyists scrambled to exploit the system for different industries and localities. This would undermine whatever abstract advantages the system has.

</blockquote>

Samuelson is the one being “essentially deceptive.” Like most detractors of action on global warming, Samuelson continues to push the unsubstantiated notion that reducing emissions will tank the economy, and thus is not worth the effort. The problem with this argument is that it ignores the last three decades of science, misunderstands basic economic theory, and overlooks the enormous opportunity presented by the clean energy economy.

Inaction is by far the most expensive policy option. Global warming was correctly termed “<a href="http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/4/3/Executive_Summary.pdf">the biggest market failure in human history</a>” by Sir Nicholas Stern, a senior economic advisor to the government of Tony Blair. Establishing a price on emissions through a cap-and-trade system actually improves the efficiency of the economy by ensuring that market prices include the real social costs of pollution and inefficiency. This is a basic fact of economics, popularized in the early 1900s by economist Arthur Pigou and embodied by the contemporary “<a href="http://www.eoearth.org/article/Polluter_pays_principle">polluter pays</a>” principle. Recent studies by the <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a> and even the <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/05/30/whreportclimatereport/">Bush Administration itself</a> confirm the high costs of inaction and the existence of a wide range of cost-effective actions to bring down carbon emissions and stimulate economic innovation.

The “abstract” advantages of cap and trade are real. Samuelson simultaneously argues that cap-and-trade is a backdoor carbon tax while deriding its advantages over a tax. One of the fundamental differences between a set tax and cap-and-trade is that while a carbon tax assumes the government knows the proper marginal cost of emissions, a cap-and-trade system <a href="http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/11/6/01958/0916">lets the market set the price</a>. In an economy like the U.S. that has been functioning without any effective greenhouse gas constraints, the initial cost of emissions reductions is likely to be quite low as we capture the <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/pdf/US_ghg_final_report.pdf">low-hanging fruit of efficiency gains</a>.

“Influence peddling” should be addressed in any system. As John Whitehead writes at the Environmental Economics blog, “Just like any government policy, <a href="http://www.env-econ.net/2007/06/carbon_tax_vs_c_2.html">both a carbon tax and cap-and-trade can be gamed</a> through the political process. It is goofy to try to argue that one would be gamed more than the other.” Samuelson’s concern about influence peddling can be addressed by a commitment to <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/06/auction_revenue_report.html">auction 100% of the emissions permits</a>, as advocated by the Center for American Progress. The opportunity for gamesmanship would be minimized by a full, transparent, permit auction instead of the free allowance giveaway advocated by most polluters.

Global warming is not just an environmental crisis — it is a public policy problem. Given the choice between an innovation economy that uses clean energy efficiently, and an economically devastating climate crisis, the choice is obvious. It is time for naysayers like Samuelson to stop pitting the economy against the environment, and recognize that a safe and sustainable environment is the bedrock of our prosperity. That is an idea worth investing in.

UPDATE: Ryan Avent at <a href="http://www.ryanavent.com/blog/?p=1076">The Bellows</a> writes:

Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson has long impressed me as one of the most hackish economic columnists not associated with the Wall Street Journal and not named Ben Stein, but today’s piece on cap-and-trade is dismally, embarrassingly stupid. Its essential premise is that consumers and producers of energy don’t respond to price signals, something so incredibly, obviously wrong that even the dolt editors of the Post opinion section should have wondered what was up. Samuelson should be ashamed of himself.

</blockquote>

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