50 years celebrated
Dileepa Fonseka has published a short article in BusinessDesk’s On The Money editorial covering Margalit Toledano’s retirement celebrations that we held last week. See here:
OTM understands we’re a regular Saturday morning read for a fair few public relations (PR) people, if only to check what kind of damage control might be needed during the coming week.
So, given Wednesday was World PR day, we thought it was fitting to celebrate one of the great voices for ethical public relations: University of Waikato Associate Professor Margalit Toledano.
The Public Relations Institute of New Zealand held a celebration event for alumni and people in the industry for Toledano on Wednesday at the Nancy Caiger Gallery in Hamilton, marking her retirement as a lecturer in communications at the University of Waikato’s Management School.
The school is, famously, where former PM Jacinda Ardern was taught communications.
Toledano was responsible for bringing Boston University’s capstone PR course with her to Waikato two decades ago, which is why Waikato’s PR school is the only university in Australasia to have earned a much coveted Public Relations Status of America (PRSA) accreditation.
“Today I’m completing 50 years of a career,” Toledano told the audience in a speech.
“Half of it was actually practising PR, and half of it was as an academic. One of the employees in my PR agency … said that I am the best practitioner among academics and the best academic among practitioners, but what I can tell you is that I have never been the best, but this combination, really, I feel privileged.”
The tributes and tears were notable, so much so that Margalit joked she hadn’t been prepared to hear such tributes while she was alive.
“It feels like it’s too early for my funeral, you know.”
Her parting retirement words should be food for thought for everyone.
Toledano said PR was often associated with unethical forms of spin doctoring, but that was never what she had taught her students.
And now, she believed it was even more important for PR people to look at issues through an ethical lens, as well as take a greater interest in wider societal issues like the state of democracy.
“What I’m trying to do is to empower these young people to say no to employers who try to demand some kind of unethical service … PR can be used to bring peace to the world, to move organisations to become more responsible, to be the ethical conscience of an organisation.”
Industries like PR couldn’t exist in closed societies, she argued, so it was in their interest that democracy be preserved.
“We have a very bad reputation in PR. We are, I believe, misunderstood. PR is identified with spinning and misinformation, with bribing and lobbying, and we earned this bad reputation because [some] practitioners are unethical.
“PR people can use/abuse their power to harm democracy, and I really want to live in democracy.”
