Is Honesty The Best Policy?

Continuing with the same topic from yesterday, I must say that I’m reading a very interesting book, called “Where the truth lies”, and I came across a chapter which deals with being honest in the PR world.
I’ve been thinking about the level of honesty a PR practitioner can have, if he wants to achieve the top position in his career. Is it really possible to be honest?

There is an author’s statement that reflects how dishonest the whole nature of business is; “Buying something from A and then selling it on at a profit to B is fundamentally cheating on both A and B, who could have come to an agreement without you in the middle.” (Michael Wolf, 2006, p. 35). This statement is true only in one way because, as the author clarifies, without the PR as the catalysts connecting A and B, there wouldn’t be any business going on.

There are many ways of being dishonest, but what does dishonest mean? From my own point of view, someone is dishonest when he doesn’t act according to his own moral, and therefore he has been dishonest with himself.
In the chapter called “Is honesty the best policy?”, the author says, “Whatever ethical position you take, its extremely difficult when times are hard and your loyal employees are banging their begging bowls on your door to turn down income from drug companies, arms manufacturers…”(Michael Wolf, 2006, p.36).
So what should good practitioners do, if they don’t want to be seen as evil? Is it really dishonest to work for certain companies? What I really think is that good practitioners should be prepared to work for any kind of company and be able to rebuild its reputation, because that is really acting ethically towards the PR world, and that is what we, as practitioners, should be able to achieve.

To Do or Not To Do

I have been reading some articles from Chelgate’s website, an independent UK PR consultancy, and I found some of them quite interesting. This PR agency has its Headquarters in London, offices in the North of England, Romania and Brussels and an international network of associates around the world.

The article that I have to highlight is written by Terence Fane-Saunders. For those who don’t know him, he is Chaelgate’s Chairman and Chief Executive, widely regarded as one of the leaders of the international public relations profession. Before founding Chelgate in 1988, he was Chairman and Chief Executive of Burson-Marsteller, one of the three largest public relations firms in the UK, and served as a member of that company's international management board.

The article's name is "Ethics and Public Relations" and talks about what a PR practitioner should do or refuse to do. I have been thinking for a couple of days, what I would and wouldn’t do as a practitioner, and trust me, is very difficult to know exactly what you would do, because when you are working for your boss, you have to do what you are told or you will be fired so. are practitioners really allowed to act according to their own ethics, or are they threatened by their superiors?

The article says that to create positive and productive relationships, they have to be founded on trust, and in order for someone to trust us, it is essential to tell the truth. But, is it possible to always tell the truth or are lies sometimes worthwhile to do the least harm possible?

Below you can see some “don’t do’s” from Terence Fane-Saunders’s list:

We don't lie.
We don't withhold facts if we know that by withholding them we actually mislead.
We don't buy favours. If a media trip is primarily a "jolly" for the journalists, rather than a chance to see and learn, then that is buying favours. And we don't.
We don't abdicate responsibility. We are not just messengers in Brooks Brothers suits. We are responsible for the information we provide. "Well, that's what I was told" isn't good enough. If we have reason to doubt the facts, we check and check again.
We don't make promises. And when we do make them, we keep them. And if we don't keep them, we admit the fact and put the record straight. And if we can't be straight, we quit public relations and start selling Time Share.

Ethical Decision Making in Public Relations

Everyday public relation practitioners face different situations in whitch they have to test their moral resolve, and therefore we can decide their ethics according to the decisions they make.
I would like to highlight the importance of the codes of conduct, because its purpose is to be a useful guide to its members as they carry out their ethical responsibilities. Every public relations practitioner should know exactly what its responsibilities are. These responsibilities may vary, depending on who the practitioner is dealing with.

After reading “Exploring PR” and “Public Relations Ethics”, I have realised the importance of knowing with who the practitioner is dealing, and which responsibility the practitioner has. I want to share with you all a brief review of what I think is the most important to understand.

In the first place, the “duty to self” is mentioned, which means the practitioner has a responsibility with his own ethical code which, in other words, could be explained as each persons moral based on different types of ethics.(Tench and Yeomans, 2006, p.296)

In the second place, there is the “duty to client or organisation”, meaning practitioners should act positively towards their client or organisation. Every practitioner assumes their clients’ image, and therefore, it is certain that they should always try to improve this image, known professionally as reputation. (Tench and Yeomans, 2006, p.296)

In the third place, there is the “duty to profession”, and this responsibility is widely with the whole profession. In this duty is where codes of conduct become very important, because “these encapsulate principles of ethical practice and provide the basic standards for practitioners” (Tench and Yeomans, 2006, p.297). With them, practitioners have a guide to follow under certain circumstances in which they can be involved, without knowing which the right action to take is. It is also very important to have support and to offer it to colleagues when they may need it. (Tench and Yeomans, 2006, p.297)


Finally, there is the “duty to society”, responsibility which deals with what you, as a practitioner, are offering to the society. The society in this frame can be described as the public you are meant to deal with. It is vital to know the target, so that public relations practitioners can serve the information they are required from the society. It is important to add that this can not be possible, because not everyone has the same interests.
In other words, “another way to look at this practical term is to ask if your actions harm anyone and, more positively, whether you are making a valuable contribution that will enable people to live more informed”.( Tench and Yeomans, 2006, p.297)

Introduction

We have all been told about telling the truth since we were little, but is telling the truth the only ingredient in ethics?
“Ethics is more than simply following the letters of the law. It is a fallacy to assume that everything that is legal is also morally correct.” (Patricia J Parsons, 2004, p.9).
Law and morality are related, but sometimes practitioners have to make decisions and sometimes, although these decisions are legally correct, in some cases they are not morally correct or, in other words, they are not ethical.
Being ethical is very complex, because as human beings we are all different, therefore our moral varies depending on our culture, religion or many other external factors. What I’m trying to say is that, when we act in a certain way, we are trying to be ethical according to our own moral.

In the PR world we have a lot of different practitioners, with different goals to achieve. However, it is true that all of them are not the same; some of them want to make profit out of everything, without thinking about the negative side of acting unethically, others want to make profit making sure they act in an ethical way. For the first kind of practitioners, I would say that “not getting caught doing something wrong does not make it right.” (Patricia J Parsons, 2004, p.9)

Public Relations have sometimes been related to persuasion, the public may think that practitioners play by not telling the truth about what they are trying to sell, and although persuasion and PR are totally different things, there is one situation in which telling the truth is not the most ethical course of action. “If telling the truth outright is likely to harm one or more publics, then it seems that it is probably more ethical to avoid that full disclosure.” (Patricia J Parsons, 2004, p.17)