Furthermore, the concept of black PR in LT is strongly bound with political PR. And here lie a lot of expectations of market participats (i.e. research respondents): from lobby (in the best case)or even corruptive activities (in the worst), without acknowledging the risk of illegal state surveillance upon these black technologists.

The Canadian Public Relations Society does have some minimum requirements, too. From its website:

“Membership is voluntary and is restricted to individuals (not firms) who are engaged in the practice of public relations on behalf of business and industrial concerns, consulting firms, trade and professional associations, governments, educational institutions, health and welfare organizations, and other similar endeavors.

Eligibility requirements are fully described in Part 4 of the Society’s Bylaws. To be eligible for membership in the Canadian Public Relations Society, applicants must devote most of their work for/pay time to the practice of public relations, have a degree in public relations, or be a career teacher or administrator engaged in public relations/communications education at an accredited post-secondary institution.”

Interestingly, when I was doing my research on Charles Tisdall, I learned that in the “good old days” the boys club voted on whether someone could be admitted to membership in CPRS or not. Something Charles apparently worked to change.

Finally Markus, any association that has you as a member is obviously a force to be reckoned with….

I don’t know of any major public relations-related association that insists on approving that each member has attained a body of knowledge (i.e., been “certified”) prior to the granting of membership. (In most cases you pay your membership fee and tick-off a box saying you read the code of ethics and agree to adhere to it.)

Ergo, the credibility and argument for carriage of “policing” the individuals on what is right or wrong regarding practice is weaker.

“As you weren’t the body to train me–note, not test me on my existing skill set and knowledge–why would you be the watchdog to say what I’m doing is wrong and that my membership is in jeopardy?”

I concur that the German model is indeed moving this accountability and “professionalism” forward and I look forward to hearing more information.

It would be interesting to know how the German Association managed to do it.

However, I notice that in a small country like Portugal or Austria we have the problem of close relations and personal relations becoming more important than relationships based on professional standards. That’s what I was trying to bring about.

João Duarte

Impressive data and above all, impressive reality. I’m sure we are all aware of the cultural differences (some of them have been mentioned in Tonisblog) that make it normal (in countries like e.g. China ) for Journalists to accept bribery in order to go to press conferences. But I totally agree that black PR is not a problem only in Eastern europe.

As for Portugal, I can say that the logic of the PR market is mostly based on mid-level professionals with only Journalism studies and entry-level professionals with different backgrounds (including PR and Communication). This kind of structure seems not the ideal one to avoid black practices, most of them performed by ex-journalists working on the “other side of the fence”. Bottom line is that the existence of the so called black pr practices (although not proofed and most of all, not assumed by any of the important actors of the field, except maybe some academics) is unquestionable, at least from what we hear and what we see in the news.

I totally agree with you that this is the kind of sindrome that exists in many countries: professional associations are “affraid” to expose (or even to privately deal with) bad cases. The curious thing is that this is a stigma that, as PR practitioners, we constantly counsel our clients to avoid. We insist that “the first step to deal with a problem is to acknowledge it” while we keep running away from our own problems. In fact, this explains why so many PR Agencies and Associations fail to have a PR Department while trying to make others believe in the power of PR.

João Duarte