Spin

PR people are often called “spin doctors.”

I’ve always considered that a slur because it suggests public relations is all misdirection and manipulation, trying to make the bad look good and the good look better.

Good PR people don’t engage in such illusions. (And by “good” I don’t mean “virtuous.” I mean “effective.”) Their goal is not to hide the truth, but to ensure that it sees the light of day.

By “truth” I mean the information a reasonable person needs to make informed, rational decisions, whether it’s buying the company’s products, working for it, investing in it, or letting it into your community. That’s not as easy as it sounds.

I was never asked to lie during my PR career, but I often had to struggle to figure out what the truth was. Not always because people were hiding it, but because it was scattered across the company and seldom evident. Carl Bernstein defined journalism as “the best available version of the truth.” That’s often true even for the people inside a company.

Finding the truth in a crisis is especially difficult, even for the people closest to it. But some version of the “truth” begins spinning through the media even before all the facts are known. That’s why it’s so important to act quickly.

Some clients expect their PR people to emphasize the positive and ignore or downplay the negative. Good PR people fight that. And there’s as much effectiveness as virtue in it when they do. Transparency is king. Instead of releasing selected information, tell all that you know and admit what you don’t. The good and the bad.

That rule applies whenever communicating on behalf of an institution, especially if it’s prominent or in the news. Whatever such an institution says carries two meanings: the semantic and the pragmatic.

The semantic meaning is the literal answer to the question, “what did they say?” The pragmatic meaning answers the question, “why did they say it?” which is always colored by “who are they?”

The pragmatic meaning always trumps the semantic, giving whatever you say a spin of its own. So in little things, show enough vulnerability to laugh at yourself. And in serious things, admit when you’re wrong or at fault. Both will give you a reputation for integrity and the credibility that comes with it.

That’s the pragmatic meaning you need to communicate the truth. In its best available version.