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US and UK Must Maintain Professional Standards When Using New Technologies
By Rosanna Fiske
PRMoment.com
Published: Feb. 1, 2011
One wouldn’t have necessarily thought this the case, but America’s and the UK’s “special relationship” apparently extends to how our respective governments regulate commercial speech among bloggers and marketers.
For the uninitiated (and this may include American readers), the UK’s Office of Fair Trade (OFT) launched last December its “Handpicked Media” investigation in an effort to uncover the level of engagement of “handpicked media” of bloggers on a commercial basis. In essence, it’s a form of the United States Federal Trade Commission’s 2009 ruling of similar note, otherwise known as the “FTC blogger rules.”
The details of the OFT’s investigation and the implications it may have on the UK public relations and marketing industries have been thoroughly deliberated. I thought it might be useful, however, to provide a perspective from America on where public relations stands. More specifically, the work many professionals, including my colleagues at the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), are currently undertaking to implement stronger ethical standards within emerging public relations and marketing practices.
Read the rest of the op-ed here.