Communication Code of Ethics, how do they work?

Christian Donald                           

cd341620@ohio.edu  

In today's world where news is spread at a rapid rate, what kind of news can we expect? In a world where news can be sent from a phone just seconds after the event has occurred, how reliable is that news? With the codes of ethics we read about, I believe we can eradicate any sort of errors, and make news enjoyable as well as reliable. The first code I am going to talk about is the PRSA, which stands for Public Relations Society of America.

Picture source: PQE Group

In the 2020 summer session, I took VICO 1000 at the Ohio University, taught by Professor Alost, and we talked about the Public Relations Society of America when we were going over ethics for different areas of photography in the field of visual communication, which included advertising, public relations, and photojournalism. Professor Alost described the Public Relations Society of America as one of the larger organizations for ethics in the public relations field in his book. In the following sections I am going to sum up the codes, as I see them.

PRSA (Public Relations Society of America)

In my mind the PRSA does a great job of deliberating on the different area's where ethics play a part in communication. Not only due they give area's where ethics come into play, they also give scenarios in which to avoid. The ethics that they list give the journalist a good understanding of what is expected by the public, as well as their colleagues. This is the list of topics that the article points out:

• Advocacy
• Honesty
• Expertise
• Loyalty
• Fairness
• Independence

In the next section I am going to describe a set of principles laid out by the Institute of Advertising Ethics.

Institute for Advertising Ethics

In the Institute for Advertising Ethics article that we were assigned to read they list nine principles, most of which dealt with the idea of transparency. Transparency in the advertising realm means to be honest and  not hiding business dealings or any other issue that would compromise the relationship of the advertiser and the consumer. These nine principles do a good job in describing what a good journalist should encompass. Here is a list of times there were cover ups that just ended up making things worse.

Conclusion

With all of the different codes of ethics that we have read this week I think that what we must keep in mind is, that it is important to treat others as you would want to be treated.