Under the headline, “Was Baradell a Bit Too Honest?,” a journalist named Phillip Day posted a letter on Romenesko’s blog suggesting that I should have been fired for writing a story that I considered “slanted” and “sensational.”

Phillip missed the point. The story I referenced in my previous post had no inaccuracies; it was thoroughly reported — bulletproof.

However, based on my reporting, I personally believed that the individuals who made accusations had an ax to grind and that, since the accusations could not be verified, they should not have been published. Instead, we published the accusations — clearly stating that they were accusations, not facts. Journalists do this every day.

Unfortunately, we also know that when a newspaper publishes accusations, many people assume they are true. To paraphrase Ed Meese, “Most people accused of a crime are guilty, aren’t they?” I think journalists sometimes take this power for granted.

Adam McGill of D Magazine was kind enough to link to my previous post, “The Case Against Morally Superior Journalists,” on FrontBurner, the magazine’s excellent blog. Unfortunately, he also posted this “summary” of my post, as submitted by an anonymous journalist:

SB’s post can be distilled down to “PR practitioners and journalists are human, and as such are fallible.” There’s nothing wrong with that. But then he goes on to describe the false moral high ground journalists claim over their PR counterparts — get this — right before he himself stakes out a moral high ground over journalists — get this, Part II — right before denying that he is staking out a moral high ground! He truly does belong in PR. Read those last two graphs to yourself. It’s like something out of the Onion.

Of the three objections SB has to the craft, only one has to do with actual journalism; the other two deal with anti-journalism. Deciding what your story is before doing your reporting has as much to do with reporting as deciding what your results are before doing your research has to do with science. That takes care of points one and two. Point three, the one that addresses actual journalism, baffles me. No subject in such a situation is required to submit to an interview. If pursuing such a story makes him uncomfortable or compromises the delicate balance of his personal moral framework, then he never should have been a journalist in the first place. The question of whether or not stories of personal tragedy are newsworthy has tied me into neither pretzels nor knots — and I have done such interviews under the most unsettling circumstances.

To respond to this scribe’s complaints in order:

1. I do not think PR people are morally superior to journalists — far from it. The point of my examples was to show that there are difficult moral and ethical choices to be made in all professions.

2. The suggestion that journalists don’t sometimes conduct interviews with a fully formed angle in mind is silly; I don’t think the poster actually believes this.

3. The suggestion that certain publications don’t sometimes slant their coverage toward the sensational is also silly; whether you blame Rupert Murdoch or prefer to go all the way back to Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, we all know this happens — and that it’s nothing new.

4. The poster is “baffled” by someone who is uncomfortable going to the house of a murder victim’s family — unannounced, uninvited and after several unreturned phone calls. Sorry to be so “delicate.”

The senior internal PR person is one of the most important leaders within an organization — not just because of his impact on company strategy, but because of his relationships and frequent contact with the news media.

The media uses your company’s spokesperson as a gauge for how things are going for you. Is the spokesperson happy? Then maybe X Corp. is a fun place to work. Is your spokesperson passionate? Then maybe X Corp. is driven to achieve its operational objectives. Most reporters don’t spend a lot of time poring over your balance sheet; they often start with their right brain — their intuition — to sniff out problems at a company.

That’s why it’s never a good idea to part with your PR exec on bad terms, as the tri-cornered hats at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation obviously have, based on this report in The Daily Press of Newport News, Va.

Reporter Chris Flores apparently tried to reach Tim Andrews, the erstwhile PR chief for Colonial Williamsburg, on the phone, then discovered his contact info was missing from the organization’s Web site. He even tried to find Andrews by going to his home, to no avail. Making matters worse, no one else at Colonial Williamsburg would return his calls, either.

Well, it’s too late now, but if you’re curious — here’s what I would do if I were wearing the tri-cornered hat:

1. Give Andrews a nice severance package to make him happy — even if the departure was voluntary. The severance agreement would contain the terms of a smooth transition.

2. These terms might include, for example, friendly calls from Andrews to his key media contacts to inform them of the change, followed by a press release that hails Andrews’ contributions as it introduces his successor.

That would have worked a little better than having Chris Flores at your ex-PR man’s front door. Now everyone looks silly, and if I were Flores, my next question would be, “I wonder what other funny stuff is going at Colonial Williamsburg?”

The periodical Ethical Corporation has a special report on the relationship between corporate responsibility campaigns and public relations firms. It questions whether PR firms should be guiding corporations in their social responsibility programs, since PR is a profession “preoccupied with symbolism, imagery and perception rather than substance.”

There’s a simple answer to this question: No. A PR firm should not run your company’s social responsibility program. That PR-first approach is what leads ExxonMobil to address the legitimate concerns of environmentalists by starting a “Save the Tiger” campaign to protect endangered bengal tigers. Get it? The tiger is ExxonMobil’s mascot! How “preoccupied with symbolism rather than substance” is that?

The correct way to do social responsibility is better exemplified by ExxonMobil’s competitor, BP, which has worked hard to present itself as enlightened on environmental issues — principally global warming. BP’s efforts start with the CEO and have substance behind them. I don’t doubt that BP’s PR team played an important role in the development of its strategy — it should have — but not the leading role.

I love journalism, and I respect and admire the work of journalists. I also know, in this era of angry bloggers, that so-called MSM (mainstream media) journalists take more unfair crap than just about any profession — with the possible exception of contingency attorneys.

That said, there is one thing I don’t like, and have never liked, about some journalists. I don’t like the way they treat public relations practitioners.

I’ve been on both sides of the journalist/PR pro relationship, so let’s start with a confession. When I was a reporter, I was often rude to PR people. I treated them alternately as annoying telemarketers (when they pitched me a story) or slavish assistants (when I deigned to write about their companies.)

One incident in particular still elicits pangs of guilt. A PR person representing a large Dallas church invited me to interview one of his denomination’s national leaders. He called me several times, and was nice enough, and so I finally relented and agreed to do the interview.

But then something came up that day and I forgot all about the appointment. At the end of the day, when I checked my voicemail, I had an angry message from the PR guy. He kept calling until he was able to reach me on my phone to tell me how unprofessional I’d been, and how embarrassed he’d been sitting there, with this national religious figure staring at him, waiting for me to show up.

What I feel most guilty about today is my reaction to his call. I was apologetic on the phone with him, but when I got off my first thought was, “Well, I’m never dealing with that guy again. What a jerk!”

Of course, I was being the jerk. But I was so accustomed to PR people who quietly endured my arrogance that I mistook his aggrievement for hubris.

I believe in karma now, because the same thing happened to me a year after I started in PR. I had just taken a mid-level corporate job and had arranged several interviews with the CEO at a trade show. The CEO and I sat in a 10-by-10 room with empty white walls and a small white table, waiting for the first reporter to show. He never did. As I fumbled with my cell phone and developed flop-sweat, the CEO stared at me. (I believe the reporter acknowledged a “scheduling conflict” in an e-mail to me a week or so later.)

OK, I deserved that one. But what I didn’t deserve was the “calling out” I got from an erstwhile journalistic colleague a few years ago. I was working in corporate communications, she was still a journalist, and she was writing a story about a controversy involving my company.

The conversation went like this: She asked me a question, and I told her my company’s point of view on the issue. She didn’t agree with this viewpoint; furthermore, she didn’t believe that I agreed with it, and blurted out the following:

“Scott, you’ve sold your soul!”

Notwithstanding the utter lack of comprehension of what PR people do — i.e., we represent our employers or clients, not ourselves — this former colleague’s comment goes to the heart of what bothers me about some journalists. Put simply, they think they are better — that their jobs have a higher moral and ethical purpose than that of the lowly PR practitioner.

I have always found this ironic (and on a handful of occasions like the one above, infuriating) because I left journalism for three reasons. One, I was burnt out. Two, I wanted to earn a decent living. And three, I did not like some of the moral and ethical situations I was put in as a journalist.

I didn’t intend for this post to turn into Moby Dick, so I’ll close with three examples of these moral and ethical situations:

1. Reporters routinely kiss up to interview subjects in order to get their story. This is particularly questionable when the reporter already knows that he’s going to write something negative about his interview subject. A great example of how this dance works is “Anatomy of a New York Times Article,” a blog post by Mark Cuban. Reading the e-mail trail reminded me of some of my own past sins; it made me a little queasy.

2. One of my last assignments as a journalist was to write a story about the Dallas school system. The publication’s editor had gotten a lead on a “conspiracy” of sorts within DISD, and asked me to talk with his sources and write the story. I talked to his sources; there was no conspiracy, or at least not one that could be in any way proven. But the editor insisted that I wasn’t “digging hard enough.” I relented and gave him the slanted, sensational story that he wanted. I felt sick afterwards.

3. Reporters are often required to knock on the doors of people whose loved ones have just died — often violently and unexpectedly. Although there is usually no legitimate purpose for this other than to sell newspapers or earn ratings points, journalists wrap themselves in pretzels to find the “higher purpose” in this practice. Let me explain why you’re wrapping yourselves in pretzels: there is no higher purpose.

These elements of the reporter’s life never felt right to me; they weren’t right, by my moral and ethical standards.

That said, I would never attempt to take the moral high ground with a journalist, because I know that ultimately we’re all just people, doing the best we can. We make the compromises we can live with.