Bernaisesource

Traditionally, the PR and legal departments have stood on opposite sides of the communications spectrum.  While both serve to protect a company’s or client’s reputation, their priorities are very different.  PR folks spin, use superlatives (first, best, biggest, fastest, etc.) and seek maximum exposure.  Lawyers prefer legal jargon, urge restraint (one of the first, best, biggest, fastest, etc.) and encourage minimal disclosure. (“No Comment.”)

New media only heightens this tension.  For PR professionals, blogging presents exciting opportunities to engage different audiences in new, more personal ways.  It allows us to circumvent the reporter’s filter and converse directly with the public.

Now no one ever said that print and broadcast journalism were predictable, but the blogosphere compounds that unpredictability with its legions of bloggers beholden to nobody.  It fosters a certain lawlessness and encourages its free-wheeling denizens to shoot from the hip. 

It is no wonder that a medium which holds great promise for PR professionals is causing fits for legal departments.  In the blogging world, it is harder to contain what is being said and control who is saying it.  Once more, the musings of employees are permanent business records, which are admissible as evidence in litigation. 

I suspect many lawyers would love to cut off all employee contact with bloggers or at least funnel all their comments through a time consuming review process.  But this can’t and won’t happen.  We can circle the wagons, clamp down, restrict and deny, but bloggers will continue unabated.  The blogosphere is too big, too dynamic to be ignored.

So in the world of transparency and decentralization, can PR and legal departments get along without driving each other crazy?  Where is the common ground that will allow PR and legal departments to at once raise visibility and limit exposure? 

For some perspective, I reached out to Doug Isenberg.  No stranger to media, the law and Internet, Doug started GigaLaw.com in 2000.  He was blogging before it was called blogging.

Doug recognizes that it’s ridiculous to pretend that negative blogs don’t exist.  The surest way to limit liability is to screen postings before they are published, but this process also limits a blog’s effectiveness.  A watered down blog “says nothing, speaks to nobody because it appeals to nobody.”  While he would advise clients to err on the side of caution, reality dictates some risk taking to achieve some degree of reward. 

The questions raised by his clients are instructive for PR professionals who must grapple with the negative rantings of unhappy customers, disgruntled employees and disappointed investors.  In the past, there was no such public forum with a wide distribution for these individuals. Today there is.  Offensive comments are more difficult to ignore.  Once more it is a hell of a lot easier to post those comments anonymously.

Doug regularly advises clients who want to respond and clamp down on negative postings.  He asks them, and we should ask ourselves, whether they are really prepared for the consequences if they engage.  Will responding to a blogger only embolden further comments and keep the conversation going?  Will questionable cease and desist letters get posted and fuel the flames?   Is better to leave well enough alone? 

In many cases, Doug would say yes and I am inclined to agree.  Where he draws the line is the posting of illegally obtained and proprietary information and in cases of suspected libel where an author knowingly makes false comments intended to cause harm or damage.  Libel is hard to prove and therefore charges of libel can’t be made lightly.

With the proliferation of blogs, we all know it is impossible to respond to every negative posting by every blogger regardless of influence.  So it is important to prioritize based on size, readership and influence. 

In many respects, blogging is not creating new code of law.  It is only allowing long standing issues to express themselves in a new forum.  The old rules of disclosure and libel still apply.  They are merely magnified in the blogosphere and require PR and legal strategies to be in close alignment.  Failure to do so may ironically turn a legal response into a PR headache.

Let me get back to you.

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