When a former colleague blindsided us the other day with a self-aggrandizing "tell-all" about his backroom dealings with our beloved Red Sox, it raised a bunch of issues for me.
The issues revolve around confidentiality, trust and business ethics. At RBSC, we pride ourselves on keeping our clients' secrets. Our culture is built around it, it's in our employee handbook and it's one of the key reasons we have been trusted by so many clients over the years to handle so many sensitive matters. Over twenty years in business, I can't recall another employee violating that standard of ethics either during or after their employment.
In some ways, the story reminded me of the underlying tension between the press and public relations, or the press and anyone--business, government, private citizens. Reporters and editors feel a certain right or even responsibility to publish peoples' secrets. Business generally tries to keep the press at bay, often times because reporters are trying to publish information before deals are baked, products are launched or earnings are finalized. Of course, there are plenty of stories that need to be told about illegal dealings or unethical behavior.
One of my biggest hesitations over the years in hiring former journalists to work in our agency is that some reporters like to gossip with their friends and colleagues. Good PR people are very ungossipy and as a result become trusted advisors to their clients...our highest aspiration. The best journalists we've hired bring a similar style, understand that aspiration and practice it in public relations like they did as reporters.
In Boston nothing sells papers like the Red Sox and in the aftermath of the season-ending meltdown, they were an easy target for our former PR exec looking to relaunch his career. There will always be a tension between any business looking to make decisions in private and reporters trying to get inside the story. At Fenway Park, that's a way of life.
Still, at the end of the day, the Red Sox will thrive and fill the seats and talk radio with adoring fans and endless chatter about everything from front-office maneuvering to a platoon of right fielders. But in our business, our former friend gave up his right to write about his work here when he took the trust we had placed in him and used it to gain the confidences of our client. In penning his little ditty, he broke most of the rules of business ethics I know both written and unwritten.
About two weeks after our erstwhile staffer came to work at Rasky Baerlein, he walked into my office and announced, "You know, the Globe should have a bureau here. You guys know a lot more about what's going on than they do." It was high praise, I thought, from a guy I once admired as one of the top journalists and editors in this town.
"Of course we do," I replied. "Our clients trust us."
By cashing in on his relationships, my former colleague made a rookie mistake. But it's a mistake that will cost him the trust of many people in town.
We're not the Red Sox, but my gut tells me that Rasky Baerlein's twenty-plus years of keeping confidences and providing advice will protect us from too much fall-out. Still, it's a reminder that we have to earn our clients' trust every day and help them tell their stories in ways that create a context for the truth, not distort it for the sake of a cheap hit.
