Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

People criticise public relations for its lack of transparency. Simply put, people don’t understand the profession and where confusion exists, there is a lack of communication.

If you were the PRII and you had forums on your website, you’d think that they would be for public access? Wrong! We hide away from the rest of the world and don’t let anyone else into our world of spin.

Back to my first criticism, I’d love to link to the forums, but the site is in frames so I can’t. I think that proves my first point.

Fair enough, it was probably argued that having open forums would probably lead to trouble with all the guaranteed trolls that it was bound to attract. However, just like any site, they could have overcome this with a team of dedicated administrators.

Speaking from personal experience, I know how hard it is to get forums up and running. When I look at a site like Boards.ie, I wonder how on earth it turned into the phenomenon that it did.

So by restricting access to forums, how on earth did they ever think that they were going to take off? Well surprise, surprise the forums are as dead as a doorknob. There are more people knocking on Michael Barrymore’s front door than visiting those forums.

If the PR profession is to be taken seriously in Ireland, then the PRII should start by doing something simple by making their forums public. Your average punter could go on and see what all the fuss is about the next time a ‘PR scandal’ erupts.

My next rant about the PRII website will be about why the PRII should be blogging.