2024 / 2025: Mary Beth West on Spirit Animals, Closure & PR Good vs Evil
It’s the concluding day to an inconclusive year, in many ways.
My 2024 experience alongside my predictions for 2025 can best be summed up by one of my Internet-meme spirit animals:
For the poor folks at the ethics-embattled, financially failing, and leadership-chaotic PRSA, I’m sure this news that I’m “still here” — even despite their best efforts — is, as personified by Grumpy Cat, manifestly unwelcomed.
Which leads me to my one-line retrospective for 2024 and my one-line prediction for 2025:
2024: I learned new information about PRSA.
2025: More of this story shall be revealed.
Let the hand-wringing commence.
At a more aggregate level, 2024 included, of course, a U.S. Presidential election that many are still seeking to reconcile with their own value systems, as they ponder our 2025 future with the soon-to-be-reinstated U.S. sheriff in town, so to speak.
This same reality would have held true if Ms. Harris had been elected POTUS… it simply would have been opposite people doing their reconciling and pondering, in different ways.
By far – like it or not – the 2024 election outcome was the story of the year, arguably the biggest comeback in political history.
Consequently, as one prediction for 2025, I truly believe this outcome is going to impact both PRSA and the PR industry in ways that almost no one is talking about or bothering to acknowledge.
The industry is so ideologically locked in a far-left bent that it cannot see beyond its own hypocrisies about its “diversity” failures that are, indeed, failing us as a macro-industry itself — not to mention our larger civil society. In 2025, I think we’re going to see how that reality lands. We’re already seeing it, in part.
Another sidebar here… it’s a random pop culture tidbit, but you’ll see where I’m going with it:
Folks here in the States woke up this morning of December 31 to the news that, finally, after some eight years, “Brangelina” is officially, legally over: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s divorce is final.
The end of an era!
Think about it:
Eight years of limbo for those two. Now they finally have their closure. Bully for them.
I’ve been waiting eight years for a different kind of closure. Maybe someday I’ll find it.
Do you remember what you were doing eight years ago, around January 2017?
Well. Let me tell ya. Here’s what I was doing:
Trying to reconcile in my thinking brain that the same author of the below tweets was also trying to convince every discerning member that PRSA — under her special brand of leadership — was, had been, and always would be “nonpartisan“:
Despite how anyone might perceive TIME’s 2024 “Person of the Year” and his personality, which — like the delightful PRSA lady noted above — got him de-platformed off Twitter in the pre-Musk era, it’s never OK for a PR association leader to give patently false information to her own organization’s members by claiming to be “nonpartisan,” in the aftermath of her incriminating social media activity killing any “nonpartisan” credibility… or any credibility, period.
Fast-forward back to the future (2025):
PRSA isn’t the only one with systemic partisanship problems and now finding itself on the losing end of the White House ideological stick.
The current PRSA-appointed president of the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, or ACEJMC, might wish to take his own potential claims of non-bias and nonpartisanship under advisement, too. As it stands, the ACEJMC now faces deeply faltering credibility as a politically motivated bunch of hyper-partisans, thanks to @delAgate.
This individual leads the group that passes judgment on whether university mass communication, journalism and PR programs of study nationwide are “worthy” of accreditation via the ACEJMC’s good housekeeping seal of approval.
Like PRSA, the ACEJMC also claims to be “unbiased,” “impartial,” and without conflicts of interest in all matters of its mission, even with this “dude” at the ACEJMC’s helm, having spouted off in the following manner (and I presume he would not mind the “dude” descriptor, since he freely applies it to others in authority) (@delAgate: https://x.com/delAgate/status/1329829159732981765):
Hmmm. $100,000 in the hole? In the first year @delAgate was president?
I guess someone is going to need a new X handle… Again!
Funny how certain “nonpartisan” and “impartial” PR “leaders” with flaming cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome end up leading their organizations straight off a financial cliff.
Certainly, there are plenty of very strong, principled PR operators out there who intensely dislike Mr. Trump, who manage their organizations splendidly. You just won’t likely find them on the board of PRSA or in PRSA-appointed positions elsewhere. The public financials bear out that reality.
Slippery slopes sometimes slip and slide for eight years. Or even more.
However far down into its own abyss PRSA and its partisan leadership intend to take that organization and the PR industry with it, will be anyone’s guess.
They need to be held accountable, in light of the power they’ve assumed over other people’s livelihoods, using other people’s money, often through actions that I fully deem as bullying and intimidation.
As 2024 closes, I’m reminded that the battle in this world between good and evil will always be harsh, and, as such, unpleasant.
We have to reconcile who we are ourselves, and what our self-imposed limitations are to pursue justice the right way. Yes, we must acknowledge that no one is perfect, that bad conduct occurs on both sides of the political aisle, and that we should give grace for a mistake just as we would hope to receive grace for our mistakes.
But with that said, where does the line get drawn on simple grace for human error, versus kowtowing incessantly to years-long patterns of corruption, power abuse, and failure?
When are we too beholden to maintain our fragile access to labels of acceptance, accreditation, professional social status, or other seals of approval, by powerful but highly incompetent individuals, who place their own power, position, and profitability ahead of the greater good?
I know where that line is for me. PRSA violated it years ago, and the ACEJMC now finds itself on the wrong side of it, too — and in precisely the same way. And that’s no wonder, since we’re essentially dealing with the same cabal in both.
But I don’t think the larger PR industry leadership echelon is calibrating that line any longer. It doesn’t seem they even care.
In fact, it appears many in PR’s leadership ranks chucked away that moral compass a long time ago, out of perceived necessity to their own industry creature comforts, be they driven by ego or money.
When colleagues achieve their unjust ends, using tactics of manipulation, deception, and purposeful harm, then they actually do personify the word “evil.”
It’s a living microcosm of a larger evil that exists in our world — the most insidious kind, in fact.
If those of us who value freedom don’t take it upon ourselves to fight against forces of deep injustice and long-running patterns of intentional wrongdoing, then far too much of our lives will likely be wasted spaces of limited contribution for future generations.
I fully recognize that some people are OK with that, particularly if it means there’s a paycheck in it for them. But then we’re all left in that bed that’s been made for us by others’ duplicity or disengagement, whether we want to be there or not. And we all suffer as a result.
In writing down some of my goals last week for the year ahead, I landed on three words that have always held “core value” status in my life:
Truth, Justice, Love.
Granted, it’s an imperfect trio, which is why finding balance between all three is the most challenging dance there is in life. Only through my love of my industry’s highest potential and for those who, like me, genuinely care about it can I fight for the justice of making sure truth is known, so that our potential might someday be reached.
Which brings me to my second spirit animal: the late film icon, Bette Davis.
This 1987 interview of her by the late Barbara Walters was always among my favorites, because it reflected so clearly just how far ahead of her time Bette Davis was, both as a feminist and a great achiever in her art form. I really relate to her comments in this clip:
Like her, I might do things “the hard way” – but of course, when you’re fighting battles few other people care to touch, there is no other way but the hard one. And, like Ms. Davis, I fully recognize that for my enemies in that fight…
- I
- am
- just
- too
- much.
<cue the laugh track>
In 2025, though, I believe “too much” will be precisely the right amount.
Happy New Year – and good luck, y’all!
Mary Beth West is a 30-year public relations strategist, based in Tennessee.