Tobacco Industry Statements

Going back to the point about is it honesty the best policy? I have found a video about the Tobacco Industry saying that tobacco isn’t that bad. They have used tools like doctors and professionals to convince the audience about the benefits of smoking.
This video shows an unethical PR way of campaigning.

After all the research done to give you as much information about PR in everyday ethics, I must say that my conclusion about this topic is that acting ethically is a very powerful tool if you want to gain clients, and to be honest with your self.

At the end of this video you will have the opportunity to see the reality of smoking, and how it really affects the human body. Is it really ethical to lie about the consequences of the product you are trying to sell, or is it just beneficial in a short term?

Blogging Development

I just found a video in youtube, and I thought it would be a good idea to share it with you all. The video is about the ethical dilemma of bloggers, when they are paid to write about a certain product, and the question would be: Is it really honest?

Obviously if bloggers are paid to write about a product they are going to write about the positive side of the product, in order to win more money, and this way blogging would not be used for what it was ideally created. Should paying bloggers be banned?

Have a look at this video, and feel free to post any comments.

My Own Thoughts on Codes of Conduct

The other day, I wrote about two codes of conduct, and after a lot of thinking I realised about the fact of their effectiveness and if practitioners really stick to them.

The codes of conduct are a good guideline for practitioners, but are they really following their ethical principles, or are they flowing towards the negative side of this profession which, from my point of view, is just working to earn as much money as they can.

“communicating ethical principles also sends the message that unethical behaviour will not be tolerated”.(Seib and Fitzpatrick, 1995, p.25).

Certainly human beings with power, tend to be corrupt (karl Marx). If this assumption is adjusted to the power that public relations practitioners run every day, as information, it is easy to understand that we need some ethical principles to guide practitioners and to make clear in their minds that unethical behaviour will not be tolerated.

PR Facing an Identity Crisis

I’m going to comment an article called “Ethics and Public Relations” by Shannon A. Bowen, Ph.D. I found this article in the CIPR web site and I thought it was both interesting and directly related to this topic.

The article is divided in several headlines, and very focused on PR ethics and its evolution.
The author really captivated my attention saying “the public relations industry reduces society’s capacity to respond effectively to key social, environmental and political challenges”. Is this statement true? Is the society being manipulated by PR?
PR practitioners should stick to their job of the management of information through two-way communication techniques to build and sustain mutual understanding, to reach the highest level of reputation for an organization, but is this what they are doing?

Shannon A. Bowen believes in codes of conduct, and the power of ethical associations in order to fight against unethical practices, but not every practitioner is a member of these associations, so how can ethical behaviour reach the whole PR world?

As a solution to this problem, Shannon A. Bowen points out the training in ethical decision making is being offered by some employers, universities and professional associations. He believes that the inclusion of scholarly literature in the PR field can powerfully extend the ethical reasoning capabilities of public relations professionals.

Codes of Conduct

I’ve spent the whole day browsing through the Institute of Public Relations and the Public Relations Society of America’s web site, and I have analysed their codes of conduct. It has been easy to spot the different principals of each one.
The Institute of Public Relations principals are: integrity, competence and confidentiality, whilst the principles of the Public Relations Society of America are: free flow of information, competition, disclosure of information, safeguarding confidences, conflicts of interest and enhancing the profession.

I’m going to give a brief description on how the codes are structured in each institution:

In the PRSA, the regulations are much more accessible, in the way they are written. Firstly, they enclose a statement of professional values, and then they divide their regulations into six different principles. The first phrase after the principle is used to clarify what it means. Secondly, they give a guideline for the members to follow, and the last and the most important part is that they illustrate the principle with one or two examples of improper conduct under each of the different provisions in the code. The last part is probably the most important and valuable because, in case a member is not clear about what is exactly meant in the principle, it will always be helpful to clarify it with an example.
(PRSA, http://www.prsa.org/aboutUs/ethics/preamble_en.html).

The Charted Institute of Public Relations, unlike the PRSA, starts off its code with a list of points on which every member has to agree. Then they have decided to explain their three principles and what is included in each principle. The explanations are clear, although there aren’t many examples of unprofessional conduct. As a difference from the PRSA, the IPR´s code contains the complete normative in how to act legally in each of the different situations a practitioner can be involved in.
(IPR, http://www.cipr.co.uk/Membership/conduct/index.htm ).

Ethics and Codes of Conduct

Hi again, I hope you have all started the New Year in a good way. I’ve been having a look at some Codes of Conduct, and I have understood they are meant to regulate the work of public relations within a frame standard and keeping themselves acts with social responsibility. It is important to safeguard the credibility of public relations by a sustained mutual understanding, and by acting according to certain ethics.

After reading about this topic, it could be said that codes of conduct are guidelines for practitioners when there is an absence of laws on a certain field. The codes of conduct are generally more related to ethical moral than the law, because although the actions must be framed within the law, these actions might not be legitimate. This means that although the action is totally correct according to the law, it might be immoral according to ethics. “The advantage of such codes is found in the number of professionals who are part of designing and then implementing the standards. The disadvantage is that in achieving this breadth, specificity is often scarified.”(Seib and Fitzpatrick, 1995, p.13).
In the next few days I’m hoping to post an analysis of two different codes of conduct to compare the principals of each of them.

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.