Leading law firm, Mischon de Reya, has announced a 'reputation' service for its clients. While the idea of law firms, advertising agencies and even accountants offering communciation services is nothing new, this announcement once again highlights the problem that public relations has with jurisdiction.
PR suffers from permeable boundaries; with no solid, compulsory education base to delineate what is and what is not the remit of PR, the field is always going to be open to encroachment on its territory by other disciplines. Until the industry can precisely define its territory, it cannot hope to defend it. And as we have seen with recent industry debates on definitions, this isn't likely to happen any time soon.
This has implications for the discourse of professionalism which dominates the sector, with industry bodies, such as the CIPR, describing the industry as a profession as a default descriptor, without explaining nor defining the term. Along with ethics, which was discussed in a previous post, jurisdiction over a privileged body of knowledge is another of the key tenets of a profession. Without barriers to entry there is nothing stopping anyone, even a high profile law firm, from setting up in the reputation business, and whether we like it or not, this has an impact on the reputation of the PR industry itself. If, as the CIPR claims, public relations is 'about reputation', and if, as Mischon seems to be suggesting, clients can't trust PR firms to look after their reputation, then what is the point of the PR industry?
To avert this existential crisis, it seems to me that the industry needs to get back to basics and rather than simply employing the discourse of professionalism with no regard for its meaning, it needs to debate what this actually means for PR and how we go about putting substance behind the rhetoric.
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