Storm clouds have been gathering over the UK public relations industry after a couple of its top agencies were caught editing Wikipedia pages on behalf of their clients.  Last month Bell Pottinger was outted in a sting by The Independent and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, whose journalists posed as businessmen from Uzbekistan.  This month PR agency Portland Communications tried to edit out Stella Artois from the Wikipedia page for Wife-beater – the UK urban description of this beer brand.

The issue at hand was not that they tried to edit Wikipedia pages for clients, more that they failed to declare a conflict of interest in these edits.

Wikipedia, the free, collaborative and multilingual online encyclopaedia, is seen as a first port of call for accurate information and description because it is built on 3 key pillars – 1, contributors and editors must have a neutral point of view and no conflict of interest; 2, content must be verifiable; 3, articles must not contain new analysis or synthesis.

Today, Wikipedia has over 20 million articles – over 3.8 million in English, is available in over 280 languages and is edited and monitored by over 10,000 active editors around the world.  The fact is that anybody anywhere can access and edit nearly any Wikipedia page – some are controversially protected and can only be edited by Wikipedia’s own system administrators, is one of it’s key strengths.

Let’s be honest, managing and editing reputations on Wikipedia is not an action confined to individuals working in the global public relations industry – the internet has connected millions of people around the world.  Vandalism and trolling are a growing issue that has affected and will continue to affect this platform, though Wikipedia’s own systems, based on the power of the community, has thankfully enabled it to so far keep it in check.

The issue is about transparency, or lack of by certain communicators who fail to declare they are representing the individual or brand they are editing.  This not just damages the reputation of the brand they are working for, but that of our own profession.

Everybody has the right to a voice and to a reputation.  That reputation though is based on the actions of a client and not the image that a PR might subsequently provide.  Social networking has educated the wider audience to believe what members of their trusted community say and while PRs continue to hide behind a cloak of secrecy this profession will find it harder in it’s primary mission, which is to ‘help establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between public, private and not-for-profit organisations and their various audiences.’  I ask this, knowing how connected the world is and how communities work, was it strategically wise to try to edit out Stella Artois from the page in question?  Total control is no longer an option in today’s connected world.

The Chartered Institute for Public Relations (CIPR), the UK’s professional body for PR, issued a statement yesterday (6 January 2011) stating it’s commitment to put together clear guidance for the profession on using and editing Wikipedia by working with representatives of Wikimedia UK.  The CIPR already has in place social media guidelines that were developed by the institute’s own social media advisory board, which I sit on.  Before being adopted the guidelines were put out on a wiki for comment and debate to the UK PR community.

While here in the UK the CIPR has taken the first step in seeking and securing a partnership for the specific creation of  dedicated guidelines for PRs we should remember that the issue, like our profession, is global.  Public relations is a profession and industry in the rest of Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Wikipedia and it’s community should use this opportunity to work with PRs around the world so that these guidelines can be adopted globally.  Groups are already coming together to encourage a dialogue and understanding of what PRs do.  I personally do not expect everybody to be won over.  In fact I wouldn’t want this.  Debate is healthy and fuels change.  But I do hope that we can demystify what PRs around the world do and and contribute.

After all, we live in a globally  connected world filled with different cultures and jurisdictions that is unifying and shaping us and our opinions.  Our views are shaped by those we know and trust within our networks.  It is time that public relations professionals improved the PR for themselves.