Melissa Fleming, United Nations Undersecretary-General for Communications, delivered the Maggie Nally Memorial Lecture for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) today.
The topic was “Responsible Influence: PR in times of change”. Melissa talked about a huge range of current comms issues – from the use of AI, to disinformation, conflict and climate.
The lecture ended with a plea to the PR industry. Concluding her talk, Melissa quoted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres:
“Fossil fuel interests need to spend less time averting a PR disaster, and more time averting a planetary one.”
UNSG Antonio Guterres
So… how has climate change caused an ethical crisis for communicators?
The UN representatives have a point. A 2021 study by Robert J. Brulle and Carter Werthman of Brown University, found that electric utilities hired and used PR firms the most out of any other sector analyzed, followed by oil and gas. And of more than 600 PR firms analysed, the 25 largest firms had soaked up nearly a third of climate-related contracts with companies and nonprofits. Remember back when there was a serious debate over whether climate change was real? That was the result of what’s been described as a “climate misinformation ecosystem”, created in part by these firms on behalf of their clients.
More recently, the demand from high polluting businesses to reposition themselves as as climate-friendly also created a huge new market for PR companies.
But while burnishing the reputation of fossil-fuel exploiting clients may be lucrative, but it also caused a public backlash. For example, a letter signed by 450 experts was circulated to media in 2022, calling on global PR firm Edelman to drop its fossil fuel clients and stop obstructing climate-friendly legislation. Many analysts blame the PR and marketing industry for the discrediting of the “Corporate Social Responsibility” and “Environmental and Social Governance” sectors – and with good reason, in some cases. A lot of this is hot air, but (like CO2, methane and other gases), this hot air has a real-world impact – because the discrediting of such terms undermines the fundamentally important new approaches to doing business. And we should remember that many organisations genuinely are making an effort to adapt their practices for a sustainable future.
Comms on the straight and narrow
The good news is that there are plenty of resources for PR and marketing folks who want support to communicate ethically about climate and the environment.
And for managers at values-driven organisations looking to hire external communicators – there are some quality standards you can look for in a potential agency. One is CIPR membership – members of this Chartered Institute have to sign up to a Code of Conduct and Ethics Policy. Members can also call an ethics hotline whenever they need support with a dilemma, and download a stack of members-only resources to stay up to date on fact-checking, ethical decision-making, reflective ethical practice, data literacy skills, and more.
As a values-driven communicator and leader of a studio that supports nonprofits and social enterprises, professional standards matter a lot to me. If you would like to discuss the ideas in this post, or how my team can help you with purpose-driven communications, please reach out.
The featured image of this blog post is a photo by Chris LeBoutillier on Unsplash
