Mayor Ford's press secretary and deputy quit - when PR pros are between a rock and a hard place

So looks like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has lost his press secretary and deputy, both of whom quit today.

Some of you might be asking: why did they quit? Why not just ride things out, get to the end of the line at some point and get laid off when the mayor resigns?

While I couldn't tell you with certainty what the reasons would be, I can take a pretty good guess.

There comes a time for every PR person where their morals clash with what is being asked of them. I suspect these two folks know the real story behind Ford's drug use (or at least know more than they would like to know).

Which then puts them in a tight spot. The mayor is clearly going to keep denying things until the last minute. He obviously views this as himself against the world and it's circle the wagons time. Which means at best he has to engage in lies of omission and at worst outright lying.

To be the press secretary in such a situation is a tough spot to be in because it essentially means you have to lie as well.

Contrary to the public's sometimes misguided opinion, most PR folks hate lying with a passion. It's not even so much that they are against lying from a moralistic perspective (although for many that's a part of it), it's that lying makes your job 100 times harder than it should be. Every statement must be intricately crafted so that it doesn't contradict past lies, and as time goes on it gets harder and harder to keep all the statements cohesive without at the same time being painfully obvious that you aren't being completely forthright.

And in the end the truth always comes out anyway, so it's a lot of effort simply to kick the can down the road a bit.

Did they do the right thing quitting? I would say they did. If the mayor won't take their advice and instead is asking them to do their jobs in a way they aren't comfortable with, leaving is the right thing to do.

What's really sad for PR folks that get caught in these situations is there's no recourse. They can't for instance claim that they were being asked to do something that was wrong... since technically telling your PR person to lie for you isn't illegal.

Personally I think it should be illegal to make your PR person lie for you. While I'm not 100 per cent sure, I'm fairly certain that investor relations folks do not ever have to lie and in fact it is illegal for them to do so. So they at least have recourse to say 'I'm not going to do that and risk going to jail' - and if a company were to force them to do so, or fire them as a result, they have recourse to seek compensation for wrongful dismissal.

But for a PR person, it's either get with the game plan or get out.

The good PR folks get out.

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