Disclosure

Hello, Potentially Outraged Reader!

Washington is a city where many people are employed or their services are retained simply because they are good at persuading people of things.  This unfortunately leads their opponents to the understandable (but intellectually lazy) circumstantial ad hominem conclusion that because Person A takes money from industry X, we cannot believe anything Person A says about industry X.

But it isn’t just salesmanship or snake oil or shilling:  Washington is also a place where people are employed or their services retained because their professional persuasive ability stems from their personal political or philosophical beliefs.  The personal and professional are, in many cases, inextricably linked.  That is the circumstance I find myself in.

It’s been my experience during the 8+ years that I’ve worked with organizations that are often accused of shillery–think tanks, trade associations, publications with a clear philosophy, and private consulting firms–that it’s pretty rare to find someone who will say in his own name something that he actually doesn’t believe just because he’s getting paid. Don’t get me wrong, it happens, but it doesn’t seem to be the norm–but maybe I’m just lucky.

More often, I’ve seen one of three things happens.

1. People who already care about an issue arrive on their own at a position that is agreeable to Person, Industry, or Company X.  Further work in defense of that position is encouraged by X donating to/retaining the services of/joining the organization that has produced it.

2. People who don’t care one way or another about an issue get paid by X to care about things that aren’t contentious, like public awareness campaigns. If the Stop, Drop, and Roll! Coalition wanted to pay me to write an oped about fire safety, I’d do it, and I’d identify myself as writing on behalf of the Stop, Drop, and Roll! Coalition.

3. People who don’t care one way or another about an issue get paid by X to care about things that are philosophically consistent with their world view, but maybe not a top priority. Take school choice, for example.  I support school choice and vouchers and all that jazz, but it bores me to death as a policy issue, so I’m not likely to blog or write much about it (though I may link to my friends who write about it).  But boy howdy, you sure could pay me to care, and if I wrote anything under my own name about it, I’d disclose the organization I was working with.  The NEA, on the other hand, couldn’t pay me enough to have my name associated with them or their cause.  Various X organizations are usually pretty good about only approaching people or firms that  have a good chance of agreeing with their policy goals in the first place.

The exception to that is that a profit-seeking consultancy or a trade association.  I’ve worked at both, but I’ve never been asked to write something I don’t believe in under my own name, nor would I if asked.*

So here is my statement of disclosure:

1. I work in PR and public affairs.

I have clients.

Some of those clients were assigned to me precisely because I already know about, care about, am interested in, and agree with them on the issues they care about.  I read about and think about these issues all day long, so it’s natural that I write about them. I have a documented history of having cared about and written about these issues before I worked here, and I’d be writing this stuff even if they weren’t my clients.

I consider myself to be in the first group listed above: I arrived at certain positions pertaining to certain issues affecting certain industries because of my political philosophy and my enthusiasm for those industries and their products.  In other words, I don’t care about my clients’ issues because they are my clients; they’re my clients because I already care about their issues.

That means, Potentially Outraged Reader, that there is some overlap between stuff I care about for work and stuff I care about for the purposes of my personal blog. Every thing here, however, is my personal opinion and in no way related to the terms of any client relationships or the terms of my employment.

2. Sometimes, I’ll help out a co-worker or a client of our company by mentioning a project they’re trying to promote. I will disclose in the post, in that case, that it is on behalf of a client. (On twitter and Facebook, I use #client to identify these posts, but on this blog, I’ll actually write it out.)

3.  A wise man is rumored to have once said something along the lines of, “If you have to attack your opponent’s motives for making a argument, you’ve already lost.”  That said, although I am aware of the often fallacious nature of ad hominem attacks and am careful to avoid basing my arguments on such reasoning, I’m not above name calling.  Sometimes a wanker is just a wanker and no further comment is necessary.

I once had my name associated with an organization that turned out to not be what it seemed. I stopped writing under my own name for them, and I left the job shortly thereafter.

Note: This statement was last amended on April 13, 2010.