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Bill Paarlberg's Editorial Imperative

PR, Measurement and the Truth
"Holy epistemology, Batman! Is measurement the truth?"

PRWEEK has been advertising an upcoming debate on the subject "PR Has A Duty To Tell The Truth." Gosh, you mean PR sometimes doesn't tell the truth? And here we've been wondering why PR has such a bad public image.

Can you imagine any other serious profession arguing about whether or not it's their duty to tell the truth? MDs? CPAs? Well, OK, lawyers and politicians, but even they don't have to pretend like they are debating the topic. It's often their job to hide the truth, and everybody knows it.

(For myself, frankly, I think the whole debate is a smokescreen: Of course PR sometimes doesn't tell the truth. That's the nature of business -- caveat emptor and all that. Misrepresenting reality is part of PR's job. But it's also part of the job to mix in enough truth with the deception so that the public will keep paying attention. You've got to fool some of the people most of the time, otherwise they'll stop reading your press releases.

And that's why anyone is even bothering to debate the topic at all: to keep the public on its toes. If the public thought it wasn't PR's duty to tell the truth, then PR would simply be less effective.)

And speaking of PR's effectiveness, that's our territory here at The Measurement Standard, and truth is a topic that is very important to us. But measurement is not really about truth or falsehood, it's about doing research to determine the truth.

Yeah, OK, lying with statistics is probably the third oldest profession. In fact, it is way too easy not to tell the truth with statistics. Trying to fix that situation is a big part of why The Measurement Standard exists.

And of course measurement is sometimes biased, or incorrect, or incorrectly interpreted. It is often not at all clear how to properly measure a PR program. As a practical matter, PR measurement is often only an approximation to the results we wish we could have if we only had a bigger budget or better technology.

But that's beside the point. Our position here is that measurement is either done correctly or not. We are not having -- or ever going to have -- the "Should measurement tell the truth?" debate. Here in the measurement niche of the PR profession, we take it as axiomatic that correct measurement is the truth.

As far as we're concerned, measurement is a topic that lies in the realm of logic and science. You either do it the right way or the wrong way, (and usually you are trying to figure out what the right way is). Truth, on the other hand, is a much more flexible concept. And an excellent topic for debate.

Bill Paarlberg is the Editor of The Measurement Standard. In seventh grade and twelfth grade he won first place in his school Science Fair. Visit his website at www.paarlberg.com.

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