On Friday, Jim Staples, the head of Cartoon Network, resigned following a guerilla marketing stunt that caused a terrorism scare in Boston. His resignation followed two weeks of headlines following what has been called the Mooninite Scare.

If you haven't been following the story, Turner Broadcasting and their marketing agency paid artists Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens to place dozens of flashing signs on bridges and transit sites in 10 cities. You can take a look at a video that shows them placing the signs. The signs, part of a campaign to promote the show Aqua Teen Hunger Force, showed a crude cartoon figure - a Mooninite - "flipping the bird" to passers by. Boston police received dozens of panicked calls from people who thought the signs were explosive devices, forcing them to shut down bridges and send in the bomb squad.

No doubt this was the last thing that Staples thought would happen when he signed off on the project. But, just what was he thinking when this crossed his desk? More importantly, where was his PR department when the Moonie plan was being put in motion? Did they know about it? Did they counsel the boss about the potential for misunderstanding in this hyper-sensitive, post 9-11 era?

Sadly, they didn't. Or, they didn't know until the cat was out of the bag. Or, if they did know, they didn't speak or their counsel went unheeded. OK, enough salt in the wound. But this raises an important point about the blurring of the line between public relations and other communications practices.

The PRSA and Bacons recently conducted a survey of nearly 1,500 PR executives. When asked to choose among four issues, they rated maintaining credibility within an environment where the lines between advertising, public relations and journalism are growing increasingly vague as the greatest facing the profession.

This qualifies as a line-blurring example. The media were certainly engaged. Publicity was generated. Hundreds of publications from The U.S. to Romania picked up the story. But I doubt that Turner's senior management would be particularly happy to leaf through the clips.

Despite what some of my PR students might think, Turner did not get its money's worth out of the campaign. Aqua Teen Hunger Force show got a negligible bump in ratings. The Associated Press reported that the cartoon averaged 386,000 viewers last week among its targeted demographic of 18-to-24-year-olds, according to Nielsen Media Research. The previous week, the show averaged a virtually identical 380,000 among young viewers.

So, where was the PR? Why were they not part of the process? Perhaps they could have argued against it, or at least persuaded them to give the police advance warning about the campaign.

The sad part was that they were most effective after the cat was out of the bag, managing their company's responses and preventing things from escalating beyond their control. As PR people, we need to understand and engage tactics like guerilla marketing. We need to be fluent with the technology of social media - blogs, RSS feeds, myspace, and YouTube. Ultimately, we need to be prepared to take risks. Risk aversion isn't an excuse for inaction. However, we also need to be a voice of reason for our organizations.

Let's hear your thoughts on this.