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Comment by cglee | Hacker News Reader

Selective truth != truth. I'd say selectively presenting one side is dishonest. I don't have anything against companies who are dishonest, but let's call a spade a spade: PR companies are spin doctors. They're dishonest. That's not quite straight out lying, but to me the very definition of dishonesty is not presenting all of the truth if you can.

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You're right, but "dishonesty" is a dirty word, despite not necessarily always being bad or immoral. It's up to journalists to perform balanced reporting. We trust them to do that.

Lazy journalists that simply rewrite press releases, emails from their friends, or otherwise fail to do any meaningful research are the ones truly deserving of the label "dishonest" (amongst others!).

>I'd say selectively presenting one side is dishonest.

do you vote with your dollars in this regard?

If there was a bigger PR penalty for not revealing unpleasant truths and maybe more support for a company that does reveal unpleasant truths about itself, more companies would be more open.

Whether he votes with his dollars or not is irrelevant to the fact that selectively presenting the truth to influence people is dishonest.

right, but it has everything do do with the profitability of honesty.

Yea, I have considered "legacy" PR fundamentally flawed for a while now.

"Legacy" PR being based on one-way broadcasting of a message and manipulating perception. It is just fundamentally flawed. There is a PR 2.0 movement which moves away from this stuff and is much better.

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