On 04/02/2010 12:51 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:
Here's the question: If you can't tell it's PR, is there anything wrong with it?
Possibly, which is the problem. The main function of PR is to put the best spin on things in a way that everybody accepts that as the truth. By its nature, it's unavoidably POV and COI. Bad PR gets caught doing this; good PR doesn't.
Wikipedia has shifted the balance of power some: there are new ways for PR people to get caught, and importing their broadcast-media habits makes them look dumb. But I have every reason to expect that PR people will adapt. Even so I think they'll have a hard time shifting the tone much on articles that get a lot of attention; the room to spin there is small. But for more obscure topics, I think there's plenty of gray area within which they can construct an article that suits their purposes. Purposes that are necessarily different than ours.
William