Golden State PR guy anonymously defends franchise on message board

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/kawakami/2009/05/21/warriors-pr-director-confirms-he-authored-anonymous-blog-comment/

Would love your thoughts on this. Golden State PR director goes onto Warriors message boards, anonymously, and tries to steer about 4-5 conversations in a positive direction regarding a number of different issues. The latest is an issue that he's directly involved with re: season tickets. Kawakami approached him and he didn't deny anything. He admitted to it all without hesitation.

My opinion? I think being anonymous is a little tacky, but going onto message boards to preach positive thoughts might not be a bad idea for a PR guy.

Thoughts?

 

He's a PR guy, isn't that what he is supposed to do? Make them sound good?

 

Yup.

Shit, he's doing his job.

 

However, he's clearly not real good at keeping his identity anonymous.

 

here, here.

 

Obviously. But he does seem to be earning his paycheck.

 

Isn't anyone bothered by yet another Web site revealing the source of an allegedly anonymous commenter -- something its sites specificially allow? You had the Atlanta newspaper confronting a local franchise owner with charges that its IT staff had tracked some comments to his office, and now this from the Warrior fanboy site.

Strikes me that places like this will pick and choose, outing those whose views it disagrees with while maintaining cloak of anonymity for those who favor its side.

I think it should be all or nothing -- either you require registration and info that identifies every poster equally or you allow all of them to operate behind the curtain.

 

Aside from that, and I know the ethics are totally different, but I would think some would have at least a little bit of a problem with somebody employed in such a position by a professional sports franchise going in and doing these things without disclosing who he/she really is.

Or not.

 

Posting anonymous arguments on his blog and those of critics led to Michael Hiltzik losing his business column at the L.A. Times a few years back. He was assigned to sports for a while before moving back to business (and getting his column back).

 

No, he's not. Did you read the comment? He passed himself off as a fan.

"I think we are all so mezmerized by what we read in the paper and take it as gospel. I actually enjoyed the call and appreciate their honesty, even if everything was not what we wanted to hear. I would like to hear from them more often. I have already renewed and are part of the 70%, so I will hope for the best from section 121……"

PR people are always going to spin; in some difficult circumstances, they might have to lie. But lying voluntarily, for dubious gain or no gain, is not part of the job. Neither is lying about their identity.

 

VCU has a fan message board?