The emerging debate about whether libel legislation in England and Wales (the debate seems to centre on ‘UK law’, so the lobbyists are already displaying an understanding gap) is outdated and needs changing highlights the requirement for PRs to up their legal knowledge.

Which probably won’t be that difficult, given a lot of PRs have next-to-no knowledge of media law.

I say that not to be deliberately provocative, (honest, m’lud) but because in my experience accomplished PR people who are great at generating publicity and advising their clients on media strategy don’t know their defamation from their slander. Or their libel. Or their D-Notices. And a tort is a lemony dessert served by Irish waiters in a pizzeria.

Quite how they have managed to avoid legal action to date is anyone’s guess. Sure, most of us don’t spend our time advising clients to say or write something that would cause such an allegation, but the fact that there is so little basic knowledge of the parameters of the existing legislation and case law is enough to make a professional indemnity insurance broker weak at the knees.

One point of contention at the moment is that social media and other online discussions should be exempt from “libel laws”. What a stupid idea. Let’s legalise murder for certain troublesome parishes while we’re at it.

The laws associated with saying bad or incorrect things about people do need to reflect the immediacy and reach of internet communication. But there is a far bigger issue here for PRs – the power of the internet and the fact that these conversations are there forever mean that if you don’t know your legal onions know, you’d better get a grasp quickly, whatever legal changes are brought in.

It’s difficult to say why media law has not been taken more seriously by the PR industry. Perhaps clients get legal sign-off on materials so PRs have figured they’ll leave it to the lawyers. Fair point, but as the impact you can achieve for a client is now driven in no small part by the potency and relevancy of the content you produce, PRs are having to ‘produce’ more words themselves in order to do their jobs. And where there are words (about people) there are legal risks. More words, more risk.

But, question: how many agency PRs have actually been involved in any libel, defamation or slander action, and so have any experience to draw on, or have taken steps to learn about this area of the law?

Here’s an idea: rather than slobbering over the next fat pay rise they can get by jumping ship to an agency that’s in mortal fear of not having social media swagger, or worrying about their alleged Twitter influence and how ‘the community’ perceives them, perhaps a few self-professed digital PR gurus should get themselves a media law textbook and swot up. Or they could go on a course that covers this area, if there were any. The course schedules, of course, are packed with introductions to social media and the like, without more than the faintest whiff of legalese.

But I’d better not be deliberately provocative.