Elisabeth Warner
ew758821@ohio.edu
The value of ethics codes
Most professional organizations in the 21st century have formalized ethics codes as a way to clarify and embed core values, provide ethical guidelines for behavior, and raise awareness for ethical decision making. Advertising and public relations organizations are no exception to this. All institutions have a duty to possess a robust ethical framework, and ethics codes are one way to articulate that structure. However, for organizations representing professions whose perceived credibility not only determines their own efficacy but also has the power to shape public opinion and policy, such as PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) and IAE (Institute for Advertising Ethics), the ethical obligations are immense. And ethics codes, by themselves, are feeble. This absence of real rules has merged with the anarchy of the digital landscape to highlight the importance of new prescriptions that can address the dangers posed by the unique power and history of these institutions.
Codes are not policy
Professional ethics codes help provide a path for managing ethical issues in ways that reflect the organization's ideal culture and norms and establish expectations of behavior for people within a given profession. But these codes function as high concept, not policy. At best, they are suggestions, but without codification into policy, they are not meaningful directives.
Unless business owners or workers are part of regulated professions like nursing or accountanting that require licensing through state boards, codes set by trade organizations are not rules, and there is no direct consequence for not following them. Not only that, membership in these organizations is optional–both PRSA and IAE are without authority over operating professionals. The codes of ethics for most organizations are advisory, not governing, and lack any real teeth.
Influence and profit
Beyond the voluntary nature of these organizations, there are practical reasons their leadership may have in choosing not to make ethics codes enforceable. Broad guidelines are often unable to address real life nuances that arise, and most organizations do not have the labor or infrastructure to enforce the codes or investigate violations. But failure to put updated prescriptions in place for advertising and public relations is dangerous for two reasons.
First, as mentioned above, their actions have profound impact on personal and civic life. Most of the decisions we make are informed by what we have absorbed outside of our direct experience, and much of what we have absorbed comes from mediated sources. These decisions might be trivial, like choosing green should because you saw your favorite musician wearing them or deciding where to eat because you read an online review of a new restaurant, but these decisions can be personally consequential, too. Where we go to college or buy a house is shaped in part by the impressions we've formed from advertising and PR campaigns.
Widening the scope beyond impact to individual lives, many of our political opinions come from marketing orchestrations around individual candidates and issues. The tragedy of the Russian war against Ukraine is objectively no more horrifying than the wars Russia waged against Syria or Georgia, but because of the combined efforts of Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky and state media, information (real and otherwise) has broken through in the US in ways that rarely happen in foreign affairs. Zelensky has been a master of wartime communications, moving many Americans with declarations like, "I don't need a ride" (which, unsurprisingly, has inspired no small amount of merchandise, always the mark of a successful marketing campaign). Will the PR enlisted to generate global support lead the US to war? Kuwait successfully used professional PR firms to gain support against Iraq in 1990, leading the US government to start the first Iraq War, so it would not be the first time PR has shaped geopolitical outcomes.
The second reason being without new prescriptions for these industries poses a threat relates to their essential natures. The very existence of advertising and PR is centered in the dissemination of propaganda meant to advantage actors in exchange for compensation to the practitioners. This means that professional advertisers and public relations workers are paid to promote the agendas of their clients, giving those agendas primacy.
By themselves, both propaganda and client agendas are neutral– promoting ideas, products, or people does not inherently require manipulation or deceit. But when promotion is predicated on profit, the incentives become economic or political, which invites unscrupulous behavior. The motive for advertisers to use their influence skills and resources in ways that undermine public interest in strong. There has never been a shortage of clients, individual, institutional, or governmental, who wish to exploit the persuasion tactics of a skilled marketer, or of a skilled marketer who is willing to be exploited for their own gain.
Marketing, either by advertisers or PR practitioners, is a powerful tool that can be used to exploit emotions, create division, and capitalize on insecurities and fear. And that's on its best day– imagine the harm done when that tool is powered by distortion and lies. Without more guardrails to protect against bad actors, we are vulnerable to individual and social injury.
Candle in the wind
None of this is new, but the rise of digital platforms has acted as an accelerant to the existing dangers posed by advertising and PR that has not been sufficiently regulated. Dark PR, the intentional circulation of disinformation often referred to as fake news, is increasingly prevalent online. Because disinformation can be transmitted much more quickly than traditional media, it is effective in spreading content that is absorbed by the public before private security firms can stop it. Troll farms are spreading false information about elections, Covid, and consumer scams. PR firms buy bots to increase their client's visibility. Advertisers use gaming apps that bypass FTC regulations to target children. Ethics codes don't stand a chance.
Image: Zambian Observer
All this is not to say they are without value. Properly articulated, ethics codes are useful in modeling desired ethical positions and offering professionals within an organization and industry guidance in managing complex situations. But while they can help model best ethical practices, the codes themselves are impotent, and certainly no match for venal interests that can exploit advertising and PR in ways that subvert public safety. And really, it is not fair to expect ethics codes to do the heavy lifting intended for national and international regulatory agencies, who are ultimately responsible for enacting laws that protect citizens from harm.
The ethical problems that organizations like IAE and PRSA have tried to address through ethics codes go far beyond these two industries, with business interest, tech companies, and bad faith politicians happy to enable and magnify the worst qualities of human nature for their profit. Until federal agencies in the US develop regulation that is thoughtful, deep, and significant, it is difficult to imagine a resolution to the ethical issues face by strategic communication. As we wait for leadership at the federal level, individual advertising and PR firms can take their existing professional ethics codes and adapt them to policies that govern not advise, forcing ethical considerations to play a bigger role than they have thus far been allowed.
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