Ethics in Public Relations

Ethics in Public Relations

Ethics is the branch of study dealing with the proper course of action for man. It answers the question what to do? It is said that if you want to Practice ethical PR you should work in the not for profit sector. Everything else is just corporate, Political or commercial propaganda. It must be questioned whether any respectable Public Relations organization would agree with this statement. I believe not. I believe that because as Public Relations practitioners are not required to conform to specific ethical rules, it makes it so much easier for the public eye to assume that PR efforts that involve reputation or representation of an organization or person could be categorized as unethical or manipulation or propaganda.

‘The practice of Public Relations is all about earning credibility. Credibility, in turn, begins with telling the truth. Public Relations, then , must be based on doing the right thing’ – in other words, acting ethically.’ (seitel, 2007, p.108). ‘Many people perceive public relations as something less than respectable –  clever strategies to convince the public that what’s wrong is right. Some see public relations professionals as manipulators of the public mind, rather than conveyers of truth.’ (Steven R. Van Hook, PHD).

Across the world, the number of internationally operating NGOs is around 40,000. The number of national NGO in countries is even higher with around 1-2 million NGOs in India and 277,000 NGOs in Russia. (www.ngo.in). A year ago a case study was conducted that dealt with the code of ethics in a non -profit organization. It was found that most of the employees did not know that their organization had a code of ethics or a code that they had to follow for their work, (Lyther, 2010). 44% of the participants have witnessed breach in ethics in their agency but have not spoken about it because of this unawareness. NGOs are often reluctant to talk about corruption for fear that it will lead to bad publicity and, consequently, a loss of funding.( Jerome Larche, 1999). Many non – profit organizations lack code of ethics or have not updated them in years, (PR Newswire, 2008).  In 2007 the Ethics Resources center discovered unethical employee misconduct was increasing, moreover the organizations with well implemented ethics program had faced least employee misconduct. ‘Public Relations people must adhere to a high standard of professional ethics, with truth as the key determinant of their conduct.’ (Seitel, p.111).

Another unethical behavior is fraud. Non – profit organizations commonly lack the budget to bring an outsider auditor to review the group’s fund on a regular basis, which creates a lack of oversight to catch financial fraud and abuse of fund. When the board or in house accounting department is in charge of auditing the books with no outside accountant it is easy to overlook and the support the ongoing negligence or outright theft of public funds. NGOs benefit from tax exemptions and charitable deduction and are governed by volunteers. The public expects independent oversight of our organization to ensure that the tax exempted money benefits the society as a whole and not just an institution or its leader.

I would like to conclude saying that my personal belief is that there exists unethical behavior in all sectors, but it is more anticipated that the not for profit PR professionals act in accordance to the code of ethics or conduct as their main responsibility is to support and perceive others than themselves.

References:

• ‘A disturbing example of unethical PR,’ April 20, 2012, PR Daily.
• Alan Findler, “some campuses decide tobacco money tainted, New York Times, 4 February, 2008.
• An abstract of Efficiency of Code of ethics in Non- profit organization by Brittney E. Lyther, August 2010.
• Corruption in the NGO world: what it is and how to tackle it’. Jerome Larche, 1999.
• http://odihpn.org/magazine/corruption-in-the-ngo-world-what-it-is-and-how-to-tackle-it/
• Non – profit Ethics Edge closer to levels of Business and Government ERC survey shows,’ PR newswire, 27n march 2008.
• Steven R. Van Hook, PHD.
• The Practice of Public Relations’. Business and Economics. Seitel, Fraser. 2007, p.108.
• The principle behind professional Public Relations Ethics, Seitel, p.111.
• ngo.in