On Lying and Blogs
In some of the tech industry blogs I frequent, there has been much hubub surround the departure of Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and what it means for the internet giant. Of course this means publications everwhere want the scoop on what went down, who said what, and what the next steps for the company are. Unfortunately, a Newsweek reporter (and curse word afficianado) Dan Lyons was not give a straight answer when he inquired more than a month ago about a possible departure for Yang. He took it to his widely-read blog to vent and $#!& hit the fan.
He takes to his blog and lays into Yahoo! Chairman Roy Bostock for not telling him Yang was on the way out. He also goes on to say, “I was stunned by their PR operators - they’re really an unsavory bunch.” But he does go on to give them kudos for being “A crack team of lying sacks of $#!&”.
Now there are stirrings in the blogosphere about, “All PR people are flacks and liars” and yet again, our industry is dealt a black eye. What reporters sometimes fail to see is that PR people are sometimes the last ones to recieve certain information from clients. This could be a case of not havingthe right information at the right time, or outright fibbing on the part of Yahoo!, but either way, the PR profession has once again been found guilty of being less than truthful, even if the jury was just one man… who happened to have a blog.
November 19th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Not only are public relations practitioners oftentimes the last people to know about client changes, the level that this reporter goes to stereotype the greater public relations industry is unprofessional and pathetic. Just because one person lied, or just gave the best answer he could at the time, doesn’t mean all public relations practioners lie.