Ethics in Public Relations: A Guide to Best Practice

by Patricia J Parsons

Overview

Parsons (public relations, Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada) provides a framework for understanding ethical concerns in the field of public relations and corporate communications and provides readers with tools to enable them to make defensible ethical decisions. She discusses issues related to ethics and public relations practitioners, strategies and dilemmas in the field, and organizations, ethics, and public relations. Appendices offer a code of conduct and guidelines for an ethics audit. The book is distributed by Stylus. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781398695474
Publisher:	Kogan Page, Ltd.
Publication date:	01/26/2021
Series:	PR In Practice
Edition description:	3rd ed.
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.45(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

Patricia J Parsons is an associate professor and past chair of the Department of Public Relations at Mount Saint Vincent Universityin Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She currently teaches public relations ethics to undergraduates along with courses in strategy and managing organizational public relations. She also provides a consultative practice in healthcare communications and PR through her consultancy, Bio-medical Communications Inc. She is accredited in Public Relations by the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) and is a CPRS fellow.

Table of Contents

	List of figures	ix
	About the Institute of Public Relations	x
	About the author	xi
	About the consultant editor	xii
	Foreword	xiii
	Preface	xiv
Part 1	What lies beneath
1	Before we begin: new profession... or one of the oldest?	3
	Public relations ethics: oxymoron?	4
	A tarnished history	5
	Defining our terms	8
	A profession or professionalism?	10
	Aspiring to professionalism	11
	Measuring your professionalism quotient	12
2	A tangled web: the 'truth' about PR ethics	15
	An epidemic of lying	16
	The 'truth' in public relations	16
	Predicting honesty on the job	19
	Truth telling as a principle of behaviour	21
3	To do no harm: the issue of trust	25
	Truth and trust	25
	The limits of organizational responsibility	26
	To whom are you loyal?	28
4	Whose rights are right?	31
	Rights and responsibilities	32
	When my right conflicts with yours	33
	Conflicting rights in public relations	34
5	The trouble with rules	37
	Rules rule our lives	37
	Those darn deontologists	38
	The real trouble with rules	39
	'Situations alter cases'	40
	Moral relativism and situations	41
	The problem with situations	42
6	Robin Hood ethics	43
	What the heck is 'utilitarianism'?	44
	Motives be damned	45
	Problems with Robin Hood	46
Part 2	Ethics and the practitioner
7	Your staircase to respect	51
	R-E-S-P-E-C-T	51
	Still the moral child	53
	The moral child grows up	54
	An ethical litmus test?	56
	More than good manners: ethics and etiquette	58
	Morality and your level of competence	61
8	The good, the bad and the (almost) ugly: ethics codes	67
	Codes as contracts	68
	Minimum standards or ideals?	68
	Who needs codes, anyway?	69
	A global code?	70
	Relying on a personal code	71
	Using personal values	73
	Developing your own code	74
9	Sex and the single (or not) PR practitioner: conflict of interest	77
	Defining a conflict	78
	Sleeping with... the enemy?	78
	Practicalities before ethics	79
	Outside conflicts	81
	Personal relationships and ethical principles	82
	Other conflict situations	82
10	You... against the world	87
	A dilemma you don't need	87
	A continuum of tattling	88
	How to be a whistleblower	89
	Tattling	91
	The temptations of moonlighting	91
Part 3	Strategies and dilemmas...
11	Media relations: breeding ground for ethical problems	97
	Ethics of the relationship	98
	Honesty in media relations	99
	Media access and ethics	100
	Journalists have codes, too	101
	Aspects of ethical media relations	102
12	Persuasion... or propaganda?	105
	Engineering consent	106
	Ethical persuasion... an oxymoron?	107
	PR for biker gangs?	108
	Any client, any time?	108
	The advocate arises	109
	The 'right' to PR counsel	110
	Sneaky propaganda	111
	A war of words	111
	The pitfalls of euphemism	112
	Doublespeak	113
	The 'controlled lexicon'	114
	The vocabulary of public relations	114
	Persuasion by lobby	115
	Transparency versus obfuscation	116
13	Good causes and bad taste	119
	'Aware' of the issues	119
	A staple of community relations	120
	Seeking a good fit	121
	From good causes to good taste	124
14	PR and plagiarism	129
	A PR practice	129
	Defining plagiarism	130
	Crossing the line	131
Part 4	Organizations, ethics and public relations
15	The true reality of everyday ethics: making decisions	137
	Why make a decision at all?	138
	The best you can hope for	139
	Ethical dilemmas: not all the same	140
	Decision steps	141
	Making those ethical decisions in PR	144
	A case in point	147
	Other approaches	149
	Criteria for second guessing	149
	PR practitioners as ethical decision-makers	153
	The researcher told us so	153
16	PR and the corporate ethics programme	157
	Organizational ethics/PR ethics: not the same thing	157
	Ethics as window-dressing	158
	Social responsibility defined	159
	Public relations' role	160
17	Making business accountable: the 'new breed' of PR	163
	Back to the classroom	164
	Teaching and learning	165
	Learning about ethics	166
	Drawing to a conclusion	168
Appendix 1	For your bookshelf	169
Appendix 2	Institute for public relations code of conduct	173
Appendix 3	Guidelines for the ethics audit	177
	Index	181

Editorial Reviews

Ethical Theories For Everyday Pr Issues
Public relations ethics does not have to be an oxymoron, according to Patricia J. Parsons, associate professor at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She explains that she wrote Ethics in Public Relations to help public relations practitioners realize when they are faced with ethical dilemmas, and think through their actions and the consequences. In a textbook that shuns conventional academic prose in favor of more conversational language, she offers a framework for understanding the most important ethical issues involved in public relations and corporate communications. By helping readers "develop an attitude that supports the concept that ethics is key to professionalism and credibility in the field" and providing guidance to everyday ethical decision-making, Parsons builds a firm foundation on which real soul-searching can take place.

Although she points out that there will always be a question about whether ethics can be learned, Parsons presents the issues and situations that provide much food for thought about ethical behavior. By describing scenarios where honesty, truth and rights are called into play, she examines many of the underlying considerations and principles that guide ethical thinking.

Few Clear-Cut Solutions
Parsons explains that public relations ethics can be defined as "the application of knowledge, understanding and reasoning to questions of right or wrong behavior in the professional practice of public relations." In the first part of her book, she points out that there are few clear-cut solutions to ethical dilemmas, but it is the professional PR practitioner's responsibility to determine where the line between right and wrong should be drawn.

After describing professionalism and how it sets individuals apart from their peers, Parsons offers readers a brief test to get them to understand their own level of professionalism. Once readers know whether they truly demonstrate professionalism or need professionalism intervention, she explains that professionalism is the key to personal ethics.

Next, she unravels the tangled web of truth and how the public perceives PR professionals and the messages they convey. She writes that the five pillars of ethical decision-making in public relations are:

• Veracity (to tell the truth)
• Non-maleficence (to do no harm)
• Beneficence (to do good)
• Confidentiality (to respect privacy)
• Fairness (to be fair and socially responsible)

Parsons explains that these fundamental pillars provide PR practitioners with "a first pass at analyzing a situation to determine its ethical implications before moving on to the more difficult part of ethics: actually taking action that we can live with."

Morality
The second part of Ethics in Public Relations focuses on how our own sense of morality has developed and how we use that morality in situations that impact us. Parsons writes that PR practitioners must look deeply into themselves and construct a code of ethics to guide their own personal decision-making. She advises, "Type it out neatly and have it laminated. Hang it on your wall in your office and look at it every time you're faced with a dilemma." The ethics involved in whistleblowing, moonlighting and conflicts of interest are also addressed with many descriptive and thoughtful scenarios.

The third part of Ethics in Public Relations describes some of the strategies and tactics that are used by PR practitioners today. These apply to the daily communications strategies involved in developing complex promotional plans, dealing with the media, and even putting together employee Web sites or newsletters. Parsons explains that even simple decisions and actions have a moral component. To help PR practitioners improve the ethics of their media relationships, she offers details about these pillars of ethical media relations: honesty and accuracy, judiciousness, responsiveness and respect.

She also presents steps that can be taken to help PR messages avoid the label of propaganda, including: Avoid false, fabricated, misrepresented, distorted or irrelevant evidence to support your point of view.

Parsons concludes her book by offering a broader perspective of the role public relations plays in the ethics of organizations, and the future of the PR field.

Why We Like This Book
Ethics in Public Relations presents many relevant examples and exercises for PR professionals to consider when making daily decisions in their work. By teaching the basics of the ethics involved in the day-to-day activities of public relations, Parsons helps readers identify moral impasses while guiding them through the difficult terrain of social responsibility to professional and ethical conduct. Copyright © 2005 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Soundview Executive Book Summaries

"This book offers students and practitioners of public relations a lively and engaging conversation around everyday ethics. Patricia Parsons challenges us to reflect on our hidden assumptions and darker motives when issuing misleading news releases, concealing sources or even using the office copier for personal stuff. There should be a copy by every PR water cooler."

Johanna Fawkes

"Praise for previous edition:

Should be a required textbook for any student or practitioner of public relations. Highly recommended.

"

Choice

"Rooted in reality and pointing to professionalism, Ethics in Public Relations reminds us of our societal responsibility. It is readable, digestible and provocative."

Jason MacKenzie

"This valuable guide is based on the premise that public relations practioners 'have the power to make millions of poepl think about specific things in specific ways, ' and therefore, 'have a responsibiliity to ensure that we do so without harming the public or our own repulations.' Parsons teache public relations (Mount Saint Vincent Univ., Canada), and theis book reflects her efforts to develop 'practically useful materials' to help public relations professionals recognize and respond to ethical dilemmas. The book's practicality, evident in the second half, is one of its strengths; it concentrates on strategies for recognizing ethical pitfalls and making ethical decisions with respect to relations with the news media, propaganda versus legitimate persuasion, and internal organizational pressures to exaggerate or tell less than the full truth. However, this is more than a how-to guide; the book's first half—a very readable and relevant distillation of standard theories of personal and institutional ethics and values as they apply to the public relations profession—legitimates the practical questions and strategies in the second half and does so with a skill that many business ethics textbook authors might try to emulate. This volume should be required reading for any student or practitioner of public relations. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduaate through professional collections."—M. S. Myers, Canegie-Mellon Universityin CHOICE

From the Publisher