I had dinner last month with my friend Wilma Matthews, who runs PR for Arizona State University. Among the variety of topics we discussed was the notion of “crisis.” Wilma noted that she had written a letter to PR Week complaining that the word is used too often to characterize events that are not, in fact, crises. “Sometimes they’re just emergencies and PR can’t do anything about them,” she said.

Today, the UK edition of PR Week runs an article by Gerry McCusker, author of “Talespin: PR Disasters,” that puts the blame on the media. McCusker writes:

If you believe everything that you read, watch and hear in the media, a PR disaster is anything that causes embarrassing or negative publicity for any given organisation or entity. And I’m sick of it—sick of PR getting it in the neck. More than that, though, I’m really cheesed off that the profession I’ve studied, practised then studied and practised again over the past 20 years is becoming almost synonymous with the word ‘disaster’—and no one in our industry seems ready to combat these ongoing and damaging slurs against our reputation.

For example, McCusker notes, an incident in which a building supply company hedged on workers compensation for asbestos-related illnesses should have led the media to focus on managerial ethics and corporate accountability. Instead, “for many newsdesks, it’s easier to write the whole thing off as a major PR embarrassment or gaffe.”

McCusker asserts that a PR issue can only become a PR disaster if the media makes it one.

Just as the media look to meet their own agenda—by carrying the negative, derisory or threatening stories and features that titillate audiences—their interest in what they dub ‘PR disasters’ will continue, despite the fact that the media erroneously label many situations as PR disasters when they clearly never were.

McCusker thinks it’s up to the PR profession to do something about it.