Ethical Responsibilities in PR

Tess Woodyard

tw330817@ohio.edu

When you think of public relations, you expect them to hold a set of ethical values. Many PR professionals face challenges within these ethical responsibilities which can cause them to be portrayed in a different light.

Source: playbookpublicrelations.com

According to Ethical Voices, they made a top ten list of the main issues employers and PR professionals face. This list includes transparency, disclosure, verifying facts, deceptive practices, and more. These are all things that we would expect PR to uphold, but in many cases, it has become difficult to do so. 

Employers need to uphold these ethical practices. PR professionals also need to have a set of moral and personal values to guide decision-making and behavior. They need to obtain core skills in public relations when it comes to ethics.

According to an article by PRSA, there are factors that can cause even honest and decent people to break the rules. This can include intense pressure by management to reach unrealistic goals or targets, demands that they must consistently beat their competitions, management's willingness to overlook small but persistent breaches of policy or ethics if the employee gets results, as well as fear of job loss or internal competitive disadvantage.

Leaders of larger companies may not know everything that is happening between the ranks. However, employees know what is acceptable versus what is not and how much deviation is possible.

So how can PR professionals help make a more ethical environment? To start, according to an article by PRSA, PR professionals should reveal the hazards of having lax ethical standards or enforcement. They should also encourage management to set up a way to report malpractice so employees can report serious violations anonymously. They can also suggest bringing in an outside firm to look at the standards and practices. Finally, they can promote the development of a clear set of standards and practices that the organization can convey and post on their website.

It is important to note, we all share the responsibility to create an ethical framework for practices. It is important to protect and maintain your credibility because once you have fractured it, it is hard to gain it back.

When you have concerns about ethical responsibilities within your organization, it is important to voice your concern and be honest. At the end of the day, PR professionals and journalists face ethical problems and responsibilities that need to be looked at so they can continue on.