Ethics in Public Relations: A Guide to Best Practice

by Patricia J Parsons

Overview

The weight of social responsibility in public relations (PR) has never been more pronounced. Ensure the professionalism and credibility of your business using the practical tips and guidance in this book, written by a leading academic in the field and recommended for PR students and practitioners alike.

Ethical practice in any professional discipline is guided by age-old philosophical perspectives, but its modern parameters are continually evolving. Ongoing developments in technology, social media and social contexts mean that public relations and its practices are constantly changing, and so do the ethical questions faced by practitioners in the field.

Face the ethical questions and dilemmas that are inherent to public relations and ensure you practice across the public relations spectrum in an ethical and socially responsible manner with this fully updated guide, packed with useful tools and insights to support those in PR and corporate communications.

Engaging and accessible, Ethics in Public Relations offers a lively exploration of the key ethical concerns present in the public relations world today, written by an accredited academic with over 26 years' professional experience in the field.

Fully updated, this third edition includes an entirely new chapter on the uses of ethics in social media, covering topical issues such as blogger engagement and the relationship between employee social media activity and organizational reputation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781398695474
Publisher:	Kogan Page, Ltd.
Publication date:	01/26/2021
Series:	PR In Practice
Edition description:	3rd ed.
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.45(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

Patricia J Parsons APR, FCPRS spent 26 years as a faculty member and former chairman in the Department of Communication Studies at Mount Saint Vincent Universityin Halifax, Canada retiring recently as a full Professor. Her research, writing and teaching focused on public relations ethics and strategy, and healthcare communication. She is the author of a dozen books and numerous papers for the professional and lay press. She is accredited in public relations and is a member of the Canadian Public Relations Society's College of Fellows. Prof. Parsons lives in Toronto and can be reached via email at [e-mail] or via Twitter @ethicsinpr.

Table of Contents

* Section - PART 1: What Lies Beneath ** Chapter - 01: Before we begin: New profession... or one of the oldest? ** Chapter - 02: Lies, truth and honesty: their role in PR practice ** Chapter - 03: Truth, trust and the virtue of being ‘good’. ** Chapter - 04: Whose rights are right? ** Chapter - 05: The trouble with rules ** Chapter - 06: Utilitarianism: Right acts and wrong reasons * Section - PART 2: Ethics and the Practitioner ** Chapter - 07: Your moral development: Cultivating respect and humility ** Chapter - 08: Codes of ethics: The good, the bad and the (almost) ugly ** Chapter - 09: Conflicts of Interest: Sex and other relationship issues ** Chapter - 10: (Very) personal ethical decisions: Whistle-blowing and moonlighting * Section - PART 3: Strategies and Dilemmas ** Chapter - 11: Public Relations ethics and traditional media ** Chapter - 12: Public Relations ethics and social media ** Chapter - 13: Persuasion propaganda and advocacy: The ethics of influence ** Chapter - 14: Supporting ‘good causes’: bad ethics or bad taste? ** Chapter - 15: Deceptive authorship: Ghost-writing and plagiarism * Section - Part 4: Organizations, Ethics and PR ** Chapter - 16: Making decisions: The true reality of everyday ethics ** Chapter - 17: PR and the corporate ethics programme ** Chapter - 18: The future of ethical PR: education and leadership ** Chapter - 19: Appendix 1: For your bookshelf ** Chapter - 20: Appendix 2: Chartered Institute of PR Code of Conduct ** Chapter - 21: Appendix 3: Guidelines for the ethics audit

Editorial Reviews

"Rooted in reality and pointing to professionalism, Ethics in Public Relations reminds us of our societal responsibility. It is readable, digestible and provocative."

Jason MacKenzie

Ethical Theories For Everyday Pr Issues
Public relations ethics does not have to be an oxymoron, according to Patricia J. Parsons, associate professor at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She explains that she wrote Ethics in Public Relations to help public relations practitioners realize when they are faced with ethical dilemmas, and think through their actions and the consequences. In a textbook that shuns conventional academic prose in favor of more conversational language, she offers a framework for understanding the most important ethical issues involved in public relations and corporate communications. By helping readers "develop an attitude that supports the concept that ethics is key to professionalism and credibility in the field" and providing guidance to everyday ethical decision-making, Parsons builds a firm foundation on which real soul-searching can take place.

Although she points out that there will always be a question about whether ethics can be learned, Parsons presents the issues and situations that provide much food for thought about ethical behavior. By describing scenarios where honesty, truth and rights are called into play, she examines many of the underlying considerations and principles that guide ethical thinking.

Few Clear-Cut Solutions
Parsons explains that public relations ethics can be defined as "the application of knowledge, understanding and reasoning to questions of right or wrong behavior in the professional practice of public relations." In the first part of her book, she points out that there are few clear-cut solutions to ethical dilemmas, but it is the professional PR practitioner's responsibility to determine where the line between right and wrong should be drawn.

After describing professionalism and how it sets individuals apart from their peers, Parsons offers readers a brief test to get them to understand their own level of professionalism. Once readers know whether they truly demonstrate professionalism or need professionalism intervention, she explains that professionalism is the key to personal ethics.

Next, she unravels the tangled web of truth and how the public perceives PR professionals and the messages they convey. She writes that the five pillars of ethical decision-making in public relations are:

• Veracity (to tell the truth)
• Non-maleficence (to do no harm)
• Beneficence (to do good)
• Confidentiality (to respect privacy)
• Fairness (to be fair and socially responsible)

Parsons explains that these fundamental pillars provide PR practitioners with "a first pass at analyzing a situation to determine its ethical implications before moving on to the more difficult part of ethics: actually taking action that we can live with."

Morality
The second part of Ethics in Public Relations focuses on how our own sense of morality has developed and how we use that morality in situations that impact us. Parsons writes that PR practitioners must look deeply into themselves and construct a code of ethics to guide their own personal decision-making. She advises, "Type it out neatly and have it laminated. Hang it on your wall in your office and look at it every time you're faced with a dilemma." The ethics involved in whistleblowing, moonlighting and conflicts of interest are also addressed with many descriptive and thoughtful scenarios.

The third part of Ethics in Public Relations describes some of the strategies and tactics that are used by PR practitioners today. These apply to the daily communications strategies involved in developing complex promotional plans, dealing with the media, and even putting together employee Web sites or newsletters. Parsons explains that even simple decisions and actions have a moral component. To help PR practitioners improve the ethics of their media relationships, she offers details about these pillars of ethical media relations: honesty and accuracy, judiciousness, responsiveness and respect.

She also presents steps that can be taken to help PR messages avoid the label of propaganda, including: Avoid false, fabricated, misrepresented, distorted or irrelevant evidence to support your point of view.

Parsons concludes her book by offering a broader perspective of the role public relations plays in the ethics of organizations, and the future of the PR field.

Why We Like This Book
Ethics in Public Relations presents many relevant examples and exercises for PR professionals to consider when making daily decisions in their work. By teaching the basics of the ethics involved in the day-to-day activities of public relations, Parsons helps readers identify moral impasses while guiding them through the difficult terrain of social responsibility to professional and ethical conduct. Copyright © 2005 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Soundview Executive Book Summaries

"This book offers students and practitioners of public relations a lively and engaging conversation around everyday ethics. Patricia Parsons challenges us to reflect on our hidden assumptions and darker motives when issuing misleading news releases, concealing sources or even using the office copier for personal stuff. There should be a copy by every PR water cooler."

Johanna Fawkes

"Praise for previous edition:

Should be a required textbook for any student or practitioner of public relations. Highly recommended.

"

Choice

"This valuable guide is based on the premise that public relations practioners 'have the power to make millions of poepl think about specific things in specific ways, ' and therefore, 'have a responsibiliity to ensure that we do so without harming the public or our own repulations.' Parsons teache public relations (Mount Saint Vincent Univ., Canada), and theis book reflects her efforts to develop 'practically useful materials' to help public relations professionals recognize and respond to ethical dilemmas. The book's practicality, evident in the second half, is one of its strengths; it concentrates on strategies for recognizing ethical pitfalls and making ethical decisions with respect to relations with the news media, propaganda versus legitimate persuasion, and internal organizational pressures to exaggerate or tell less than the full truth. However, this is more than a how-to guide; the book's first half—a very readable and relevant distillation of standard theories of personal and institutional ethics and values as they apply to the public relations profession—legitimates the practical questions and strategies in the second half and does so with a skill that many business ethics textbook authors might try to emulate. This volume should be required reading for any student or practitioner of public relations. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduaate through professional collections."—M. S. Myers, Canegie-Mellon Universityin CHOICE

From the Publisher