What is ethics?

Ethics in Public Relation is often a common issue as I mentioned in the previous post.  It can affect the way in which we choose to take on project as PR practitioners and influence whether we want to represent a certain company or not. Within the medical profession ethical practice is clear cut with the Hippocratic Oath, however the same cannot be said for PR instead practitioners look to their own personal values and beliefs.  There are also the professional bodies that attempt to govern PR such as the CIPR or the PRCA.

Parsons defines ethics within the PR industry as “the application of knowledge, understanding and reasoning to questions of right and wrong”. (2008, p.9) This definition lends a basic knowledge to how we can proceed within PR in relation to working out our ethics and how far would be too far to go within a PR campaign.

There are a lot of risky campaigns that have been made especially within the public sector, such as the road safety adverts on speeding. When creating the THINK! campaigns they would have been faced with the difficult task of creating a campaign that help change people’s behaviour to speeding. The way in which they would do this would be difficult as a shocking campaign would not always be approved by everyone and they would find it too difficult to watch. However they did take a shocking campaign approach showing images of a young girl if she was hit at 40mph and then at 30mph within the speed limit. So when it comes to such delicate topics to ethics not play such a part? Do we just need to put them aside and do what is most effective? It is ok to use persuasion techniques in this example as it is for the greater good of the general public?

When considering what to do within the PR the pillars of ethics could be used as a framework which consists of:

 Veracity- to tell the truth

Non-malfeasance- to do no harm

Beneficence- to do good

Confidentiality- to respect privacy

Fairness- to be fair and socially responsible

This framework can be applied when looking at what to do with difficult subject in PR campaigns however the model can contradict itself as you may have to tell the truth, however the truth may do some harm so would you be doing any good? However if you didn’t tell the truth in order not to harm people would that mean you are not being socially responsible?

It seems there is no clear cut guidance on what to use as a guideline for good ethical practice. In my opinion it would be best to use your own ethics, morals and beliefs to help you decide what the right thing to do is. With regards to propaganda it follows no ethics it has one aim to make the audience do what you want them to do without consideration of others feelings or what is right or wrong.  So are PR and propaganda closely linked, with PR taking into consideration the positive or negative impact it may have on the audience it PR merely more communicating with the audience in the best possible way?