Antitrust Distrust: Anatomy of PRSA’s Illegal PR Industry Cartel
Cartels are illegal in the United States. Tell that to the PRSA PR industry trade association. #Omnicom
Disclaimers:
- Identifying verified illegal cartels in the U.S. PR industry falls under U.S. antitrust law and is prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division.
- No information provided in this blog is intended as legal advice, as the author of this blog is not an attorney. PR industry practitioners who feel their responsibilities and/or rights relative to legal compliance have been harmed or compromised by or within PRSA are encouraged by this blog author to consult their own legal counsel. Do not assume that PRSA, Inc.’s corporate legal counsel has individual PRSA Board volunteers’ or other PRSA “key person”‘s best interests at heart.
- Due to how PRSA defines “key person” in secretive legal definitions / documents, some volunteers or employees in PRSA may be legally liable for PRSA antitrust misconduct (at least from PRSA’s self-interested view or legal counsel’s view) BUT NOT KNOW they hold “key person” status and resulting perceived legal liability.
- This blog author encourages PRSA members to consult their own appropriately credentialed legal counsel, if needing advice on legal issues tied to antitrust law.
- Current and past PRSA National Board members and PRSA “key persons” who may believe they have been party – whether knowingly or unknowingly – to possible PRSA antitrust violations that fall within federal statutes of limitations may wish to engage their own personal legal counsel, because PRSA’s legal counsel may likely be focused primarily on PRSA, Inc.’s own corporate self-interests and/or those of PRSA’s potential shadow-board, not PRSA volunteer board members’ personal legal liability and risks. Note that PRSA’s long-time legal counsel (Venable, LLP) had a prior, undisclosed sub-contracting history with Omnicom’s Ketchum PR in its for-profit engagement advancing Russian Federation government commercial interests.
- NOTE: PRSA Antitrust Policies have clearly stated that PRSA National Board member compliance with antitrust rules falls back on those individual members personally, which potentially implies that PRSA may leverage this stipulation / caveat as a rationale not to indemnify or pay for volunteer board member legal liability that could result from a federally prosecuted antitrust settlement / legal award.
- PRSA members are encouraged by this blog author to assess their own personal financial risk in voluntarily choosing to serve on the PRSA National Board, due to PRSA’s long, complex, incriminating history of various ethical and legal non-compliance issues, coupled with PRSA’s current financial crisis and solvency challenges — details of which are being widely concealed from PRSA’s own members. In past years, various PRSA personnel have not been in compliance with the New York Attorney General’s Charities Bureau guidelines for disclosure, transparency, and fiduciary duty, and those personnel have retaliated against whistleblowers with no consequence to those violators of New York’s whistleblower-protection statutes.
https://ag.ny.gov/guidance-for-tax-exempt-organizations-on-political-activity-and-lobbying
- To register a substantiated Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint about PR industry cartel activity, visit ReportFraud.ftc.gov or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357). The FTC handles complaints about unfair, deceptive, or anticompetitive business practices.
- Whistleblower Reports to the DOJ’s Antitrust Division also can be registered, here: https://www.justice.gov/atr/whistleblower-rewards. Qualifying reports resulting in successful prosecution of law-breakers may potentially result in monetary pay-outs from the federal government to whistleblower reporters who provided specific information leading to the prosecution.
Cartels are illegal in the United States of America.
And that includes in the U.S. public relations industry community of competitors.
- Cartels unethically stifle free trade / consumer options, often with heavily veiled communication tactics that reek of PR ethics violations.
- Cartels unethically stack the deck in favor of a very limited number of pre-favored cartel puppet masters and beneficiaries, who collude with premeditation in order to profit and benefit from their own systems of unfairness in an industry / market (sometimes using third-party industry associations with appearances / images of legitimacy to operationalize this misconduct).
- Cartels unethically limit / obstruct consumers’ free choices in the marketplace.
- Cartels unethically stifle / suppress legitimate market competitors from getting a fair shot at competitive opportunities on a fair playing field.
- Cartels unethically deceive the public by posturing as legally compliant and ethical (and often, they gaslight the public by pointing fingers at others as unethical or as doing something wrong, in order to deflect attention away from their own illegal activities).
- Cartels unethically bake into larger industry systems and power structures various “shoo-in” / fix-is-in victories, to enable cartel members to win contracts, awards, accreditation / certification, and other “wins,” for their own selfish interests, at the expense of fair consideration and treatment of other competitors of merit and legitimate voices in the marketplace not to the cartel’s liking.
- Cartels even have dirty histories of “kneecapping” / threatening legitimate market competitors – with everything from illegal quid pro quo offers to threats of blackmail to other forms of illegal coercion.
Yet despite illegalities, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has been trafficking in illegal cartel systems, structures, obstructions, boycotts / “refusals to deal,” and PR market manipulations (including but not limited to the giving / receiving of PRSA-branded awards), for many years now.
All in plain sight.
I have the receipts to prove it, in spades.
And PRSA knows this — hence, their years and years of whistleblower retaliation and defamatory whisper campaigns against me.
I’ve been e-mailing them all year now in 2026 (“them” meaning current PRSA National Chair Heide Harrell and CEO Matthew Marcial), asking questions about cartel illegalities and presenting documented evidence of the same.
My evidence includes PRSA’s secretive documents and e-mails obtained legally through open-government / Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records requests, of PRSA Board members’ e-mails in which legally compromised dealings verifiably occurred and are indisputably documented.
So far: Nothing in response from PRSA. Not even an acknowledgement of my e-mails.
But of course, stonewalling is inherent to antitrust-violation cartel culture, in the “Boycotting” and “Refusals to Deal” category.
PRSA’s cartel has even boycotted me personally, by ejecting me from membership in 2021, through a collusive, secretive, and illegal effort among clearly self-identified PRSA cartel members, who personally benefited from this activity.
For example, when cartel members registered their bogus PRSA “grievance” paperwork attacking me, they did so using a dummy gmail address that couldn’t be easily traced to any of the culprits, plus, they all-out falsified their designated “Complainant” phone number on the form, instead registering a phony telephone number of:
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0
Plus, they violated the rules by not registering any mailing or physical address whatsoever, instead placing the dummy gmail into each of the mailing address data fields instead. Sound “ethical”?
For the record, PRSA’s former chair of the Board of Ethics & Professional Standards (BEPS) and a long-time GOLIN employee (with GOLIN now owned by Omnicom) — Mark Dvorak — may have said it best, when he posted in social media a group photo of many of these PRSA cartel members, cheesing it up from a social soiree table at a PRSA event.
He captioned this picture, “Voted most likely to be hauled off to jail.”
Well, indeed. I guess the BEPS Chair oughta know!
As someone who has worked in the PR industry for decades, I’m well-aware that most PR industry folks are not that well-schooled in antitrust law… or even about what the word “antitrust” means.
It’s not a topic that’s roundly taught in university mass communication courses, where many PR practitioners are trained.
So maybe it’s time to self-educate.
For starters, a “Competition” clause can be found in PRSA’s long-standing “Code of Ethics,” which notably has not been updated since Bill Clinton was President. This “Competition” clause in PRSA’s Ethics Code — while not using the word “antitrust” — is ALL ABOUT antitrust law’s fair-competition legal mandate in the U.S.
Simply put: PRSA’s National leaders who violate antitrust law are ALSO VIOLATING PRSA’S ETHICS CODE directly.
Core U.S. antitrust statutes can easily be found on the googles…
Long story short on that point: illegal cartel participants may land themselves in federal prison, not to mention be forced to cough up serious fines.
Also google-able, PRSA’s long past history of being accused of antitrust problems:
Long live the late Jack O’Dwyer!…
PRSA’s egregiously bad behaviors in violation of U.S. Antitrust Law have been allowed to root themselves long-term into PRSA’s web of complex governance and equally toxic internal cultural systems, to benefit a chosen few.
Who are the “few” I’m talking about?
Well.
Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?
Without question, on the academic side of the PR industry house, the University of Florida and New York’s Syracuse University / Newhouse School have overwhelmingly been beneficiaries of PRSA cartel members’ activities and machinations.
Numerous, specific Syracuse University and University of Florida grads / employees / programs in and via PRSA have been on the winning ticket of PRSA’s top leadership posts and awards / certification / accreditation circuit.
Not to diminish Syracuse’s own obvious alumni / staff standing among PRSA’s originating cartel architects, the University of Florida contingency among PRSA’s cartel has been so egregious — and internally resented — for their self-dealing behaviors, that they’re widely known by PRSA insiders as the “Gator Mafia.” (More on that in a future blog post.)
On the for-profit / commercial / PR agency side of the house… OMG!!!!
(Literally)
The Notorious O.M.G. is the New York-headquartered Omnicom mega-conglomerate of PR firms and ad agencies, such as Ketchum, Fleishman Hillard, and Maslansky + Partners, among its firms with global contracting / subcontracting histories with the Russian Government.
PRSA 2025 National Chair Ray Day even recruited Omnicom’s Michael Maslansky to headline a nationally promoted PRSA webinar in May of last year, to explain how to rejigger DEI policy and promotional language to sound not quite like DEI anymore, in PRSA’s “doubling down on DEI” agenda:
Omnicom now exists as the largest PR / ad agency conglomerate in the world, thanks to Omnicom’s recent merger in 2025 with InterPublic Group (IPG).
Certain Omnicom-affiliated employees past and present have been major players in — and beneficiaries of — PRSA’s misconduct… although usually HEAVILY veiled.
Cartel culprits nearly always use surrogates and third-party underlings to do their deeds. (Think of “The Godfather.” Only once did Michael Corleone actually show up as the guy who pumped bullets into his enemies. Then he disappeared in the shadows and later was rewarded for it. After that, he always sent his subordinates to go whack people.)
The PRSA cartel’s benefits to University of Florida “Gators” / Syracuse-Newhouse faculty / Omnicom-affiliated folks have included but not been limited to:
- PRSA National Board and PRSA Foundation chairmanships (high-profile, lots of industry “halo” effect)
- PRSA Gold Anvils (high-profile, lots of industry “halo” effect)
- PRSA Silver Anvils / PRSA Bronze Anvils (high-profile, lots of industry “halo” effect)
- Multiple appointments by PRSA to the ACEJMC university academic accrediting council, which controls whether (or not) more than 100 universities are deemed worthy of mass communication / PR / journalism / advertising / broadcasting / digital comms “accreditation”
- Co-chairmanships of PRSA’s Educational Affairs Committee, which renders similar judgments of PRSA-branded CPRE academic “certification” of university PR programs and therefore wields power over PR academia writ large
- PRSA Governance chairmanships to further tinker with and bastardize PRSA’s own house rules while subjugating dues-paying members to mere zero-power inconveniences who nonetheless foot the cartel’s bills (including astronomical legal bills)
- PRSA International Conference (ICON) main stage award-getting spotlights, benefiting University of Florida, Syracuse, and Omnicom alumni and/or employees to a large degree over the years
- PRSA Conference leaders who control PRSA’s consistent selection of left-wing partisan keynoters
- Appointments to the DEI-focused PRSA Foundation so-called “charity,” which illegally awards scholarships and employment internships based on race (with “BIPOC” or other specific racial identifiers being listed as required criteria points for applicant consideration)
- Other PRSSA student honors and awards… which go to UF / Syracuse on an excessive basis, including under documented evidence of potential quid pro quo (note: it’s not the students’ fault that the grown-ups sometimes are using them as pawns for their back-room power deals)
- PRSA CEO manipulations / undue pressures / extortion by / for cartel interests to force “refusals to deal” / boycotting on false / baseless / illegal grounds (PRSA’s Board even debated a boycott of the entire state of Tennessee in 2023 because of state legislation banning under-age child gender-transition genital mutilation), juxtaposed with awards and effusively positive shout-outs given to the University of Florida and Syracuse University (I have copious written evidence of all of this.)
Specific PRSA-involved UF and Syracuse employees and alumni within PRSA’s power structure have manipulated the puppet strings of PRSA governance – and then self-benefited as a result – sometimes with a heavy assist from Omnicom corporate / politically driven interests.
Those manipulations have benefited UF / Syracuse / Omnicom affiliated PRSA leaders themselves, while specific members of the cartel have operated in conspiratorial capacities to boycott / defame / denigrate / and issue market orders of “refusal to deal” with market competitors (including me) on falsified, contrived, illegally manipulated and often partisan political grounds (or combinations of all of the above).
More on these realities will be covered in future blog posts, if I’m not murdered in the meantime.
(And don’t think I’m kidding on that point, given the hate texts I’ve been sent in the past, threatening to “end it” at my “peril” if I did not “work with” people like PRSA’s 2021 National Chair, Michelle Olson.
For example, the below texts came to me in December 2020 from a past PRSA College of Fellows Chair with a prior employment history at Omnicom’s Ketchum in New York and as a self-described “mentor” to Olson. When I reported these horrific threats made by PRSA-member personnel to my safety to PRSA HQ / legal counsel, my reports were immediately dismissed and ignored – and I then was immediately kicked out of PRSA – while those who threatened me were retained / elevated / rewarded. I even have e-mails from 2018 from an Omnicom-alumna past PRSA National Chair — Kathy Lewton — mocking me by name to the entire PRSA Past Presidents Council on the basis of my having felt physically threatened and unsafe at a PRSA Conference venue).
That’s not just a “cartel,” folks. That’s a MAFIA.
Omnicom’s leveraging / control of PRSA assets as part of cartel goings-on cannot be overlooked. Particularly given Omnicom’s long-running prior patterns of corporate (mis)behavior.
Omnicom handles the purse-strings of mega-Billions in ad spending annually, across U.S. and global markets.
With Omnicom’s awesome economic power comes immense capacity to manipulate “influence” over news / editorial content to Omnicom’s left-wing liking.
Multiple Past National Presidents / Chairs have past employment ties to Omnicom-owned PR firms…
In fact, for decades — and as already noted — Omnicom (Ketchum / Fleishman Hillard / Porter Novelli, etc., etc.) also has enjoyed massive influence within the PRSA Past Presidents Council and on the PRSA and PRSA Foundation boards.
For example: John Paluszek (a some four-decade “senior counsel” at Ketchum):
Kathleen Larey Lewton (Porter Novelli; Fleishman Hillard):
Rosanna Fiske (Ketchum):
And current Immediate Past Chair of the PRSA Foundation DEI so-called “charity,” Thomas Bennett (Fleishman Hillard).
Specific Omnicom firms’ employees past and present, alongside specific University of Florida and Syracuse University employees + alumni have played major roles in seriously concerning ethics / compliance problems in PRSA, very much inclusive of censoring / obstructing / boycotting individuals who dared speak up against cartel misconduct and antitrust-violation activities.
All the while, these individual work fastidiously to promote one another’s interests and essentially, as it also appears, to cover for them.
For example…
When Omnicom and IPG initially announced its merger plans in Q4 2024, a certain someone in Syracuse University’s PR program (a past PRSA National Chair with an interesting history in collusive “refusals to deal” and “boycott” activities against a certain Tennessean) galloped to the scene in trade media, lauding Omnicom and practically providing an infomercial for Omnicom’s pending IPG merger (acquisition) with enthusiasm, on a PR industry podcast in which he otherwise was positioned as an independent / unbiased academic:
More on these realities will be covered in future blog posts, if I’m not murdered in the meantime.
(Again… not kidding.)
For the record, Omnicom itself is no stranger whatsoever to federal citations of substantial and substantiated antitrust “collusion” and “cartel” allegations, including anti-conservative ideological boycotting.
(Hint: Since I lean conservative, I’m PRSA Cartel Enemy No. 1).
Omnicom-owned PR firm personnel have interjected themselves in PRSA to weaponize precisely such boycotting as well, using PRSA as their front group.
Ketchum’s John Paluszek is one such character — and his e-mail URL on recently discovered PRSA cartel e-mails documents it:
Oh! And lest we forget …
Omnicom also has made hundreds of millions over many years by including in its PR firm representations / client rosters a number of unsavory anti-America rogue governments / regimes across the international sphere.
Why?
Because, it pays exceptionally well.
Interestingly, Omnicom currently holds a multi-BILLION-dollar contract to promote the U.S. Military (Army)…
Yet Omnicom also has simultaneously violated President Trump’s Executive Orders by remaining a rabid pro-DEI partisan cheerleader and policy wonk… vomiting their DEI blather across the whole of the PR industry to everyone who is so misguided at this point to foolishly believe that DEI these days has anything whatsoever to do with equal opportunity or workplace fairness.
Omnicom has leveraged and bastardized PRSA precisely for Omnicom’s pro-DEI money-making agenda (NOTE: intentionally contrived social divisiveness sells “PR” agency services like hotcakes! DEI may be dead or dying in the U.S., but believe me, DEI is alive and thriving in the U.K., in Europe, and in multiple other Omnicom global markets.).
So how does Omnicom and its multitude of PR firms get to traffick in DEI nonstop in the U.S. yet keep their mega-millions in U.S. federal government contracts?
Gee-Whiz. I dunno.
…Maybe because they lobby the crap out of Congress and write a metric ton of VERY BLUE political donation checks?
It’s a valid question for the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, for sure.
Or maybe Congressman Jim Jordan needs to get back involved, and on that point, a call to my own Congressman Tim Burchett is likely in order:
Meanwhile, the Feds have done at least this much:
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission issued a new, 10-year compliance order just months ago (September 2025) for Omnicom to clean up its collision act.
According to U.S. Congressional documentation in the public domain, Omnicom was credibly cited as having allegedly helped create and operationalize a partisan political “anti-conservative” advertising “cartel,” to target and censor conservative voices in a secretive manner in order to starve conservative media of billions in advertising dollars.
Without question, PRSA’s cartel has made their own partisan politics known extensively, over the past 10 years.
PRSA has personally attacked and defamed me – a past PRSA National Board member (2002-03; 2008) and PRSA Educators Academy David Ferguson Award honoree (2011) and PRSA College of Fellows inductee (2017), who, nonetheless, is also well-known as a moderate conservative who has spoken out against PRSA’s unethical partisan violations of its own well-concealed “nonpartisan” policies and its own bylaw violations – and therefore was judged by PRSA’s cartel as requiring elimination / extermination from PRSA’s membership roster.
Meanwhile, over the past decade, PRSA has consistently and publicly endorsed / applauded Democrats and liberals (remaining silent on any negative critiques of PR ethics violations by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or Joe Biden’s autopen), while consistently attacking, dissing, and accusing Republicans and conservatives – and one Republican in particular (#TDS).
The evidence file on this reality also is massive.
The @PRSA tweet file alone of clear, hearty endorsements of DNC-approved partisan folks like Joe Biden’s health-question deflector / gaslighter (Karine Jean-Pierre) and the Democrats’ widely discredited “Mary Poppins” of Disinformation, Nina Jankowicz, as PRSA ICON keynoter, are tip-of-the-iceberg.
I only gained access to PRSA’s “Nonpartisan” and “Antitrust” written policies recently, through a FOIA government open records request, and without question, PRSA has violated its own compliance with these rules, right and (mostly) left:
Otherwise, PRSA widely conceals its policies even from its own dues-paying members, on cockamamie grounds of their being “confidential” information.
A PRSA cartel ally in 2017 told me precisely such, while he and PRSA National Chair Jane Dvorak were actively hiding PRSA meeting minutes in violation of PRSA’s “disclosure” ethics code provision as well as in violation of New York State Not for Profit Corporation (NPC) law requiring PRSA Assembly minute disclosure to members.
On the antitrust front, PRSA’s systemic contrivances to manipulate PR industry market power both unethically and illegally require a much closer look at the structural underpinnings of PRSA’s cartel.
Those underpinnings begin with PRSA’s bylaws.
For example:
For decades, only one state in the union has been allowed to operate (dominate) as its own stand-alone PRSA governance “district”:
Florida (PRSA’s “Sunshine District”)
This fact of Florida’s stand-alone, one-state PRSA district has enabled certain Florida university employees and alumni overwhelming access to an automatic, “shoo-in” PRSA Board seat…
…whereas other states’ PR practitioners who wish to participate on PRSA’s National Board must slug it out and compete amongst candidates from multiple states.
From a “market allocation” perspective – arguably at odds with antitrust law – other states in the U.S. operate just as many or even more PRSA chapters than Florida does, but they don’t get to have their own stand-alone “district” with a free pass to power on PRSA’s National Board.
Compounding “market dominance” antitrust problems, the PRSA Sunshine District’s “ONE FLORIDA” status has been leveraged by PRSA’s bad actors in their cartel, to favor and entrench their PR industry market dominance, not only in PRSA but also in other PR industry trade groups (many of which receive funding from PRSA), as well as larger industry influence to benefit themselves.
Florida operates seven PRSA chapters, according to PRSA’s “Sunshine District” website:
By comparison, Texas also has seven PRSA chapters in-state, but unlike Florida’s ability to score its own PRSA Board seat automatically, Texas PR pros are forced to slug it out with chapters from five other states to compete for one district-level seat on PRSA’s national governance Board:
Another example: California has EIGHT chapters in its state (plus a reported 26 PRSSA student chapters at California public and private universities).
California also has one of the highest in-state concentrations of PRSA members in the nation, given the enormity of the Los Angeles Chapter and San Francisco Bay Area Chapter in particular.
But is California granted by PRSA its own district and PRSA National Board seat?
Of course not.
California is split up the middle in two, thanks to PRSA’s bylaws, and is forced to compete for PRSA Board seats within two separate districts:
- PRSA’s Western District, with Southern California’s five chapters lumped in with Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii and Nevada chapters; and
- PRSA’s North Pacific District, with Northern California’s four chapters lumped in with EIGHT other additional states and their chapters: Alaska, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Washington state, Wyoming, and northern Nevada.
And don’t get me started about PRSA’s Southeast District, which includes my home state of Tennessee.
Tennessee alone has five chapters (Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis, Nashville, Tri-Cities), but when I was running for PRSA’s board in the early 2000s, I was having to compete with candidates from Tennessee AND five other states, including Georgia’s mega-market of Atlanta (the “Georgia Chapter”).
PRSA’s bylaw-driven antitrust chicanery doesn’t stop there with mere geographic manipulations.
About 10 years ago, a new bylaw in PRSA was errantly passed – under false pretenses, disinformation, gaslighting, and threats to PRSA voting delegates that they would be labeled literally as “betray”-ers of PRSA if they spoke out or voted against it – to allow PRSA’s Board to prepare their own officer slate (composed of three positions: Chair-Elect; Secretary; Treasurer).
This bylaw’s architects included at least three Syracuse University people serving as PRSA National chairs or past chairs (one of them was a Syracuse Newhouse School employee), who clearly were men-on-a-mission to consolidate their market power:
- Joseph Cohen (Syracuse alumnus) / 2014 PRSA Chair
- Mark McClennan (Syracuse alumnus) / 2016 PRSA Chair
- Anthony “Tony” D’Angelo (Syracuse PR program employee) / 2018 PRSA Chair
- Oh — and by the way — PRSA’s long-time (but now-former, blessedly) Chief Financial Officer, who served as maestro over PRSA’s epic financial losses, discrepancies, and reporting violations and also served for a BEWILDERING number of years — more than two, on two occasions — as “Interim CEO” of PRSA and thus was allowed to report to himself as dual-serving CFO, Philip Bonaventura, was also a Syracuse grad:
In 2015-16, while Tony D’Angelo and Jane Dvorak were on PRSA’s National Board, Past PRSA Chair Joe Cohen pushed a PRSA bylaw change to allow the PRSA Board to begin preparing its own PRSA Officer slate, instead of an independent Nominating Committee being allowed to do it.
On PRSA’s public-facing blog, “PRSay,” Cohen preemptively admonished / scolded all PRSA members who would dare even question this corrupt set-up.
Cohen wrote:
“I have heard the concern that approving this bylaw change will remove the ‘checks and balances’ role of Nom Com and provide the Board with unfettered ability to nominate ‘their own people.’ These arguments betray an unhealthy skepticism of the Board while also ignoring the role of Leadership Assembly, which will ultimately approve the final slate of candidates.”
Per his grotesque gaslighting of PRSA members and voting delegates, Cohen accused PRSA members of BETRAYAL of PRSA if they dared even be the slightest bit SKEPTICAL of this unethical and overt power-grab.
Cohen then referenced in his “PRSay” blog the implied wisdom of another Past PRSA Chair (the University of Florida’s Mickey Nall), lauding the notion that members essentially needed to have blind faith in PRSA National Board leaders, with never a question as to their motivations or intentions.
Cohen’s referencing Mickey Nall in his blog serves as documentation that Nall appeared (or was heavily implied) to have been in on this governance scheme from the beginning, to eliminate independence within the PRSA PR trade association and instead institutionalize a cartel power structure – which indeed is precisely what resulted, and, without question, that outcome was seemingly the precise, premeditated intention by all who were involved.
This point of Nall’s own involvement would become relevant later, when – in 2024 – Nall abruptly reversed course, changed his tune, and claimed to have no knowledge that this oligarchy / cartel structure was ever the point of this bylaw change. (scroll to end of this e-mail to view that video evidence)
Notably, around the same time, Joe Cohen also was encouraging PRSA members to apply to serve on PRSA’s National Board, alongside Ketchum past CEO Ray Kotcher – with Ketchum being owned by Omnicom.
Neither Cohen nor Kotcher bothered to disclose Ketchum’s entanglements with the Russian government as Ketchum’s “PR” client.
Nor did either man opt to disclose that Kotcher / Ketchum had engaged PRSA’s own legal counsel of record, Venable LLP, in Ketchum’s ethically bankrupt work promoting and shilling for Vladimir Putin’s for-profit / moneymaking for-profit interests via Gazprom. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/stealth-players-whos-putins-american-payroll-n44876
As a result, PRSA’s membership was misled by these concealments of underlying for-profit motivations and the abuses / puppeteering of PRSA as a front group to whitewash and sanitize Ketchum’s / Omnicom’s worsening, putrid industry profile as a Vladimir Putin advocate + profiteer:
https://www.businessinsider.com/vladimir-putin-nyt-op-ed-ketchum-pr-2013-9
In the years since, Congress has exposed Omnicom’s gross violations of public trust in the mega-conglomerate’s manipulations of “industry associations” to operate an alleged “anti-conservative” advertising “cartel.”
The GARM alleged cartel resulted last year in Omnicom being placed under a 10-year Federal Trade Commission (FTC) compliance order to cease / desist alleged cartel activities in violation of U.S. antitrust laws:
Back to PRSA / 2016-17…
Portions of the wider, corrupt effort to codify bylaw-enablement of cartel control within PRSA’s leadership structure passed PRSA’s Assembly vote, based on PRSA leaders’ disinformation campaign and misleading / false promises made to delegates during years of 2015-2020.
In 2017, Joe Cohen was back at it again, pitching to PRSA Assembly delegates corrupt bylaw proposals on the PRSay blog, invoking alarmist messaging, by saying if the PRSA Assembly didn’t buy into what he and Jane Dvorak were selling, then members were “mortgaging PRSA’s future.”
Such deceptive and corrupt messaging served to push destructive / catastrophic PRSA bylaw changes, where PRSA’s Board could place people in officer slots who were most politically adjacent to pro-cartel activities and/or blatantly incompetent and therefore would never dare question the emerging PRSA cartel or push back.
This “We nominate our own officer slate” PRSA bylaw some 10 years ago fully enabled PRSA’s then pre-existing cabal to morph its powers into full-on “cartel” status.
It did so, by forcing any PRSA board director who wanted to advance to officer status to play PRSA’s political games and its “go along to get along” racket … by not holding powerful PRSA officers accountable, even when they were clearly violating PRSA’s ethics code, bylaws, policies / procedures, and even New York State Not-for-Profit Corporation law – as they’ve been known repeatedly to do, with zero consequence / accountability.
PRSA Board members who speak up in board meetings to demand accountability basically sign their own political death warrant in PRSA.
They are flagged as “not a good fit” for higher leadership positions in PRSA. When the PRSA Board would meet up each spring to “slate” their own officer candidates, voting clearly was locked-in and controlled by those already in power.
There was another non-democratic aspect to this set-up that Syracuse / Gator elite who sold the new bylaw of “Board PRSA as Self-Nominating Committee for Officer Positions” never disclosed to Assembly delegates.
The full 17-member PRSA Board NEVER voted to nominate their politically self-appointed slate. In multiple years, fewer than 10 people have been “available” to vote on their PRSA Board officer slates, due to Board members themselves who were running for officer positions themselves.
PRSA Past Chair and University of Florida employee Mickey Nall falsely claimed on an Assembly conference call in September 2024 that – <GASP!> – he had NO IDEA that this outcome was even possible… although he was one of the PRSA Past Chairs who was a reported proponent of the errant bylaw 10 years ago, given that it benefited the cartel.
But Nall let something else slip in his remarks.
Nall said during this September 2024 PRSA Assembly delegate call that “as few as 10 people electing our (PRSA’s) officers” has been going on in PRSA at various points in time ever since 2016-17.
VIDEO LINK: https://youtu.be/aIkAeamJuKk
“ELECTING,” Mickey?!?!
That’s illegal (only some 10 people “electing” PRSA officers).
Why? Because PRSA bylaws require officers be “elected” by the PRSA Assembly delegation… not “fewer than 10 people” who are politically self-involved and conflicted and, in far too many cases, ethics trainwrecks.
As such, it’s a gross violation of PRSA governance bylaws and, consequently, it is in violation of New York State Not-for-Profit Corporation law, which requires Boards to be in compliance with bylaws of their own NY state-chartered trade associations.
But this misbehavior is precisely how the PRSA cartel sausage is made:
Sell one bill of goods to get an unethical bylaw change secured, then, when no one is looking, make sure that this governance change only serves precisely the very few people who were responsible for the undemocratic rule-change in the first place.
Florida Gator (UF alumnus + eight-year UF PR program employee) Mickey Nall also has quite a past history with PRSA governance issues, according to the archive of PR trade media:
This story has a lot more to it. LOTS more.
I urge the FTC and the DOJ Antitrust Division to launch an investigation of PRSA’s cartel activities.
Many thousands of PR industry market competitors have been brutally harmed / disadvantaged by PRSA’s cartel antics (and countless other deceptions).
What’s more, U.S. consumers have been intentionally manipulated, misinformed, and disserved by this PR cartel, as they’ve leveraged news media for all sorts of political disinformation and sleights of hand harmful to democracy.
Mary Beth West has been a PR industry activist fighting against PRSA corruption for some 10 years.