Google has steadfastly refused to comment on the current fracas but a spokesman told USA Today "with typical Google whimsy": "Our focus is on delighting people with great products." If that's what's passing for whimsy these power balance usa days, I suggest we all take a weekend, shall we? Lyons says that the fact that Burson is publicly blaming Facebook is particularly surprising to industry observers and "not a very good strategy to keep or solicit other clients." It also keeps the story in the headlines. Others say that what it did was flat-out unethical. "It's simple," Public Relations Society of America CEO Rosanna Fiske tells Miguel Helft and Claire Cain Miller in the New York Times' "Bits" blog. "They took the road of misleading and not disclosing who they were representing. In the essence of the public relations code of ethics 101, that's a no-no." Privacy is a looming issue for both Facebook and Google, of course, and the Wall Street Journal reports that the latter is faring much better in the public's eye. When Ponemon Institute surveyed Internet users in March, Google was No. 19 among the companies most trusted for privacy but Facebook didn't make the top 20, Geoffrey A. Fowler and Amir Efrati report. "Google continues to be viewed as an organization -- even if it is a monster in terms of data collection -- that is somehow meeting best privacy practices," the privacy firm's founder, Larry Ponemon, tells them. Other PR experts basically tell both May and Lyons that whisper campaigns are a normal part of everyday, ho-hum business but that Burson-Marsteller screwed up the execution by not knowing the shop online 2011whisperees well enough. It didn't help that the two Burson executives involved are recent hires and reformed journalists who have not yet mastered the wink-and-nod techniques that keep you (and your client) out of trouble. But the PR firm maintains what happened is not SOP at all "and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined. When talking to the media, we need to adhere to strict standards of transparency about clients, and this incident underscores the absolute importance of that principle."
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