Recently, in my journalism ethics class, we learned about the “Beech-Nut” scandal of 1982. This case involved Beech-Nut, a company that distributed apple juice for babies to stores. During this case, Beech-Nut claimed that they stopped distributing apple juice to stores because they found out that the apple juice was really sugar water. Unfortunately, they did not remove all of the apple juice from the shelves of stores and were still profiting off of their mistake, which is obviously unethical.
During my regular Monday night routine, where all I watch is My 27, I came across a very familiar scene. Familiar in the sense that it sounded just like the Beech-Nut scandal of ’82. Which leads me to the show I was watching – King of the Hill from season 6 episode 16. This episode was titled Beer and Loathing.
Anyone who has ever seen an episode of King of the Hill is aware of Hank Hill’s favorite past-time: Drinking beer in the ally with the guys. During this episode, Peggy is hired on at Alamo’s beer factory and while she is there she begins to notice some very funny things happening. Of course, Peggy is one of the Espanola telemarketers hired on and is expected to speak to citizens of Mexico who have come in contact with Alamo Beer. Throughout the episode, Peggy begins to realize that something weird is going on with Alamo Beer in Mexico. (Apparently a little bit of soap seeped into the beer and was making everyone sick.) Like corporations in America today, and 20 years ago I might add, Alamo Beer’s CEO did not want to recall the product even after knowing that the product was not what they promised their consumers.
If this were a real suit, like the Beech-Nut case, everyone in charge of Alamo Beer who was aware of the situation would be going to jail. Of course, Peggy saves the day in the end of the episode when she sneaks the unsanitary beer into the CEO’s office and he gets sick from it. This, as usual, woke up the chairmen of the board and they recalled the entire product in both Mexico and the United States.
Now as unethical as it would have been to not recall the product, this is the time to ask what does this have to do with PR and the media? In cases such as these, what are the repercussions for the public relations consultant? And how are they supposed to react for their clients when put into a similar situation? As public relations specialists all know, we are supposed to defend our clients and their actions. Unfortunately, we are going to be faced with difficult situations and tough decisions are going to have to be made.
Again, as they are our clients, we do not have the right to be biased based on the decisions that they have made or towards the situations they have gotten themselves into. So what are we supposed to do when we’re faced with these situations? How do we inform the media about our clients’ idiotic decisions without threatening the organization or companies image? In times when we are faced with these difficult questions and decisions, we must think back to our roots. I’m talking about our journalistic roots and the ability to make moral and ethical decisions.
They (the company) need us (public relations consultants) to maintain strong heads as we face a terrified audience when we expose the companies’ wrong doings. They also need us to be able to organize a way to make it right, whether it is organizing a recall of a product or explaining what our organization is going to do for the consumers of the product to make sure that little to no harm is done towards the organization or our consumers. As PR consultants, we cannot run from everything our clients do wrong, and if we would, well lets be honest here, we wouldn’t be trying to become public relations consultants in the first place now would we? We need to do everything that is expected of us from our client, because that is what we promise to do (defend them) in times of crisis.
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