The Ethical Optimist

There was quite a dust storm brewing today on the Counselor’s Academy list serve regarding the “F” word…yup, FLACK. (By the way, the correct spelling is actually flak…who knew.)

According to my esteemed colleague Dick Pirozollo:

There is no “C” in Flak — it comes from a five-pound German word that describes the puffy clouds we see the bombers fly thru in WWII movies. The clouds are filled with shards of metal (shrapnel a French word) and we protect ourselves from this weapon by wearing a “Flak Jacket.” Those of the Woodstock generation told our parents: “Don’t gimme no flak” until we got drafted and the Army gave us a “Flak Jacket”. Hack, by the way, comes from the word for a breed of horse used to pull Hackney Carriages, often going clip clop on the paving stones in New York City. Being a hack writer, does not mean you write with an axe, it is a reflection of The clip clop beat of writing news stories using no sentence longer than five words.

Thanks to Dick for the clarification and the impromptu history lesson.

Back to the dust storm. It surfaced with an initial question that stated:

PRSA just blast e-mailed a social media seminar application which will be conducted by a person who has a blog called “The Flack.” I personally hate that title and as a former journalist conjure up only negative images of “Flacks.” I don’t think PRSA should have anything to do with someone perpetuating that derogatory name, let alone put him up as an educator or sanctioned expert associated with PRSA.

FYI, the blog in question is written by a PR pro by the name of Peter Himler.  (There is another blog using the same name on my blog roll written by Howard Wolfson that is great reading.)

The majority of respondents agreed that the word flack is negative, and hurts our profession overall:

“The term “flack” is a pejorative in public relations circles, yet this is often how journalists describe PR professionals. Personally I am not a big fan of this tag, but it is what it is. By sharing best practices and exposing ethical lapses, it is my hope that “the flack” will follow “the hack” into semantic oblivion.”

Frankly, outside the love/hate relationship of journalists and PR people, flack isn’t really that well known. We are more likely to be called spin doctors (perhaps the blog in question should be renamed The Spinmeister…). If I referred to myself as a flack in front of my folks, they’d just give me a blank stare. Hmmm…similar to the blank look I get from relatives when I tell them I’m in PR (that’s sorta like advertising, right?).

As to the “F” word, I’ve seen quite a few bloggers use it. One respondent noted that PR Newswire once used the word in an article they issued. Good lord, our own vendors are referring to us as flacks?

So, here is my big question. Do we need to take a page from the NAACP and call for a ban on the “F” word altogether? Or, is it okay for those within the confines of the profession to use it, but beware to those outsiders who dare speak it?

I, too, hope that flack falls into semantic oblivion. Then again, I hope Spin Doctor follows close behind it. The more we work as a profession to explain to the world who we are and what we do, the better our chances of that happenng.