Ethics and Professional Conduct of PR
Professionals
What are ethics?
Ethics and morals are not the same thing. According to Day (2000: 2),
moral is derived from the Latin mos, moris, meaning (among other things)
“way of life” or “conduct”. It is often associated with religious beliefs and
personal behaviour. “Ethics, on the other hand, is derived from the Greek
ethos, meaning “custom”, “usage”, or “character”. It is often thought of
as a rational process applying established principles when two moral
obligations collide.” (Day 2000: 2). This means that there is often a conflict
between two “right” moral obligations and often no one right answer.
Ethics is meant to help you make a decision in those circumstances or
when faced with a dilemma. It is also called Moral Philosophy.
The Three Branches of Ethics
According to Day, there are three branches within the field of ethics. They
are:
 Metaethics, which is concerned with the nature of ethics and
examines the meaning of terms such as good, right, justice and
fairness. “Metaethics is not concerned with making moral
judgements but instead attempts to distinguish ethical values from
those that involve merely matters of taste or attitude.”
 Normative Ethics is concerned with developing general theories,
rules and principles of moral conduct. “These theoretical rules and
principles are the ethical markers of any civilized society, guideposts
designed to bring moral order out of chaos. They provide the
foundation for ethical decision making in the real world.”
 Applied Ethics is really the problem-solving branch of moral
philosophy. Here we use the insights learned from metaethics and
the general rules and principles of normative ethics to address
specific ethical issues and cases. The idea is to reach a decision
that is not necessarily right or wrong, but well reasoned.
Definition: A moral agent is the one who makes ethical judgements,
regardless of whether they are acting on their own volition or as
institutional representatives.
The communication process also applies in the context of ethics. Day says
about this:
“A moral agent (communicator) with a particular motive commits an act
(either verbal or nonverbal) within a specific context directed at a
particular individual or audience usually with some consequence.”
Making an Ethical Decision
Day suggests that the SAD formula is the general process for making an
ethical decision. SAD stands for:
The Situation Definition
The Analysis of the Situation
The Decision
This can be more clearly represented with this diagram..
Situation Definition
Description of facts
Identification of principles and values
Statement of ethical issue or question
Analysis
Weighing of competing principles and values
Consideration of external factors
Examination of duties to various parties
Discussion of applicable ethical theories
Decision
Rendering of moral agent’s decision
Defense of that decision based on moral
theory
(The Moral Reasoning Process as proposed in Day 2000: 67)
Public Relations and Ethics
Public relations has long had a bad reputation as an industry of pariahs
who take every opportunity to exploit the situation for the benefit of their
company. This is an unfair label. Most PR professionals subscribe to a code
of ethics and professional standards that precludes them from the type of
behaviour that can be categorised in this manner.
In fact, PR has been called the “conscience” of management, because
of its role in reminding the organisation of its social responsibility to its
publics. The challenge for PR professionals, though, is in walking that thin
line between responsibility to the public and responsibility to the
organisation.
Most individuals are guided by various codes of ethics. These may include:
Societal codes, Professional codes, Organisational codes and Personal
codes.
Test Your Ethics
What is Ethical?
Indicate how you feel about each of the following situations (circle the
appropriate block):
1 = illegal
2 = unethical
3 = neutral
4 = acceptable practice
5 = good idea
a. Your boss secretly treats her best clients to cocaine.
b. An account executive refuses to attend an important client’s
function because she feels uncomfortable about the amount of
drinking.
c. An administrative assistant routinely makes up excuses for her boss
when he takes long lunches with his secretary.
d. A PR officer makes the financial picture of her company appear
rosier than it is by withholding critical information.
e. A real estate agent showing a house does not point out that the
basement floods.
f. A company denies allegations that its products are faulty, in spite of
damning evidence to the contrary. The evidence is not made
public.
g. A manager has accumulated many sick days and so takes a few
days off by calling in sick.
h. A PR executive gives a journalist an expensive gift hamper of
product after a story on the product has appeared in the local
news.
i.
An employee recommends his brother’s firm for a big contract,
without telling the boss it is his brother’s company.
j.
An executive learns that his company is about to be sold, which is
likely to send its stock soaring. He leaks the information to his two
biggest clients and a number of his friends.
k. After a year of poor sales, a sales executive convinces the boss to
let her give expensive gifts to prospective clients. The tactics work
and sales increase.
l.
Despite a confidentiality clause in their employment contract, two
employees reveal their salaries to each other so that they can
negotiate pay increases.
m. A PR executive leaks confidential information to the press in an
attempt to create publicity around a proposed business merger.
n. A job applicant finds out she is pregnant the day before her
interview, but decides not to mention it.
o. A PR executive obtains confidential client information from another
PR company and uses it to land the client.
Read the following case study. Now get into your small groups and
discuss the case study. Bearing in mind what you have just learned,
brainstorm the various options available to Jean Good. If you were her,
what would you do?
Jean Good is a public relations executive at a high-profile PR company.
Her work record is exemplary and she enjoys her work, especially since her
boss, the PR Manager, is efficient, motivating and friendly. Unfortunately,
the manager moves on to greener pastures and a new PR Manager is
appointed. He is flirtatious and smarmy, making in appropriate sexual
comments and jokes and hitting on all the female executives.
He starts a relationship with one of the junior executives, who had only
recently started working there. Two months later the junior executive is put
up for promotion and Jean Good is invited onto the promotions board.
Before the meeting, the PR Manager chats to Jean and implies that if her
vote does not favour the junior executive, Jean’s own promotion track
could be in jeopardy.
Nervous about the threat, Jean votes for the exec and she is promoted to
senior account executive, handling two of the consultancy’s biggest
clients. Jean is uneasy about the situation, but decides not to tell anyone
as no harm has been done.
A few weeks later, however, a major press launch for one of the larger
clients goes horribly wrong because of the incompetence of the new
senior executive. Jean is torn. She feels she has a responsibility to the client
to tell him the truth, but she is afraid of the ramifications. The PR Manager
could deny it and Jean herself could be in trouble. Alternatively, if she
goes above the PR Manager to the boss, she will be seen as a snitch and
she herself could be implicated since she did vote for her on the
Promotions Board.
If she keeps quiet, she runs the risk of the manipulation being discovered
anyway and of being implicated because of her involvement on the
Board. What should Jean do? What are her options? What would you do?
Write your answers in the block provided:
Expert Comment
Lara Magnus, Managing Director of Orange Ink, has this to say about
ethics in public relations:
Public Relations (PR) is a pure service industry. While the basis of our
‘business’ is to correctly inform and educate the public by working with
media and communication services, with this come many areas of
responsibility. While locally we are not a regulatory industry as such, in
many instances we probably should be. If we consider that we educate
and inform media services that in turn inform the public, information
accuracy and ethical behaviour in terms of how we convey the
information is a prerequisite to solid PR practise. However, in the local PR
industry, what constitutes ‘ethical’ is not readily defined. The question that
needs to be asked is does a PR consultant’s ethical responsibility rest with
the company they represent or the public they are informing?
If one considers that the audience of a typical PR consultant is broad and
comprises of the following: company executive team, company
employee’s, company suppliers, company stakeholders, media,
customers and partners – then where does one draw the line in terms of
‘spinning’ the truth about a product/service, situation or the company
vision?
It has been said that PR should be about conversations – and if we
consider that conversations between individuals are human, then does a
PR person give the human view to the public or the view that will protect
an organisations ability to drive its share price, gain more customers and
increase staff confidence? As the concept of ethics in PR in South Africa
has not clearly been defined, it is often left up to the PR individuals to
guide a company on what they believe is the most appropriate path,
market messaging and positioning – but once again we need to ask what
this is guided and principled upon?
While PR is certainly gaining credibility in the local marketplace, many
people and companies still view this function as part of their special
events divisions internally – as a great way to undertake corporate
relationship building directly with customers. Therefore, this boxes the PR
professional and often leads to them delivering messages that are siloed
and reflective of how their function is viewed. However, if a company
understands the power of PR, the PR professional is often more likely to
drive the correct tools to educate and inform an organisations publics.
Ethical behaviour in terms of how we position a company and its vision
and offerings should be a cornerstone to what we do, however for many
it is not. A PR professional does need to take head of what the impact will
be of the messages and ‘story’ they deliver to the market, as trying to give
the most visionary or inspiring articles to the market, may not service a
company well. Therefore, in my mind before a PR professional undertakes
any type of activity – they need to determine how much of what they are
saying can be justified – can a company prove its market stance,
leadership position etc, if not, then do not portray them as such.
However, a last consideration for ethical behaviour in PR should be given
to crisis communication. If a company is going through a public crisis, that
is any event that could impact negatively on the company, its
stakeholders and its reputation – then how far does a PR professional go
to protect the company they work for? Do they spin half truths to try and
create more stability to give the company time to re-cover from the crisis
or are they honest and ethical and report on what is actually happening?
Consider that if you are truly honest what impact this will have on the
internal audience – do you risk resignations, panic and impacting
corporate culture for a good media headline or do you deliver what is
only truly necessary to the public in their interest of all parties?
This is why in my view the individual often guides ethics in PR – as we have
the influence to convince clients of the ‘so-called’ right course of action
in terms of their communications strategies or sway them from what we
believe to be the wrong or unethical road. This is when an ethical PR
consultant can be the most powerful asset to a company in a crisis
situation.
More often than not, companies in a crisis panic and either divulge too
much information too quickly or keep close reins on all information,
blocking any media or stakeholder interest. Both instances will, in most
cases cause a negative impact and can more than often be avoided
through accurate, ethical and well thought out communication plans.