Before reading the text find as many definitions of the notion 'ethics' as you can and choose among them the most suitable one, to your mind, and explain your choice.

 

If there is one question that haunts the public relations industry it's the question of ethics.

In recent years there has been increasing alarm about 'spin' particularly in the political and business environments, and this has had a knock-on effect on the public relations industry as a whole. It is ironic that at the very time when professional communicators are being used more and more and their expertise is being recognized, there are also persistent rumblings about the integrity of the practice.

We can all think of defining moments when the ethics of the profession have been questioned, but it's also true to say that the vast majority of practitioners do their job with honesty and openness, trying to be fair both to the organisation they represent and to those who they are dealing with in the external world.

However, there is no doubt that public relations people sometimes face difficulties in the complex working environment in which they operate. Although they want to tell the truth, sometimes their understanding of the truth is imperfect for the variety of reasons. Making consistent ethical decisions in a diverse world where cultures and values clash is not easy. Being loyal to employers while living with conscience can bring conflict.

Recognizing, facing and dealing with ethical dilemmas in our everyday practice of public relations and corporate communications are the three most important aspects of the realities of ethics. Underneath this surface, however, are fundamental concerns about definitions (can we come to a consensus?), principles (what are the most important values in public relations?) and even some theory (how would the philosophers have viewed some of our issues?) that can be truly useful in practice.

More than one public relations practitioner has had to defend the occupation when confronted by a hostile sceptic suggesting that 'public relations ethics' is an oxymoron. Indeed, critics can provide us with chapter and verse on the more unsavoury aspects of this advocacy field. Consider media critic Joyce Nelson's 1989 description of public relations in her book Sultans of Sleaze: Public Relations and the Medi a: «The power of the PR industry is demonstrated by its... remarkable ability to function as a virtually invisible 'grey eminence' behind the scenes, gliding in and out of troubled situations with the ease of a Cardinal Richelieu and the conscience of a mercenary.» And it's clear that she is not alone in her view.

From journalism professor Stuart Ewen's 1996 book PR! A Social History of Spin wherein he describes what he calls a 'foundational conceit' in the field of public relations – conceit both of the notion that the public mind can and should be manipulated – to media watchers John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton's book T oxic Sludge is Good for You: the Public Relations Industry Unspun and more recently Trust Us, We're Experts and even to the daily newspapers, public relations still suffers from a bad reputation.

There is a Yiddish proverb that goes like this: «A half-truth is a whole lie.» Whereas much of the history of public relations might not be peppered with in-your-face lies, one could make the case that half-truths are rampant. There is little doubt that the public's image of public relations is less than spotless. Indeed, the media tend to lead the public to believe that there is something just a little, or sometimes a lot, dishonest about public relations. Half-truths or whole lies, is the public justified in this opinion?

American author and creator of the Ziggy cartoons Tom Wilson is reputed to have said, 'Honesty is the best image', and that comment, perhaps more than any other, speaks to the need for integrity and veracity in public communication. It seems that there is a practical side to the notion of ethics in public communication. We are in the business of image-building for employers and clients while at the same time building an image for our own field. Historically, honesty has not always been a part of that image.

Whenever anyone points out to us, the modern public relations practitioners, that Barnum represented much of what is dishonest in the history if this field, we're quick to point out that he was a 'publicist' who lived in a different era. No one could truly call him a member of the public relations 'profession' (more about that term later). Every professional discipline has evolved. But even throughout the 20^th century when modern public relations practice was born, we continued to find ample fodder for the image that public relations is perhaps less than honest. Modern public relations in the developed world today can arguably trace its roots to the United States of the early 20^th century and people such as Edward Bernays and Ivy Lee. In his book PR! A Social History of Spin, social historian and media critic Stuart Ewen describes Bernays as 'a farsighted architect of modern propaganda techniques who, dramatically, from the early 1920s onward, helped to consolidate a fateful marriage between theories of mass psychology and schemes of corporate and political persuasion.'

A nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays was convinced that a 'public relations counsellor' (a term he is reputed to have coined) should use social science approaches to manipulate the masses into thinking they way they ought to think is the way the social elite thinks. In 1928, Bernays wrote in his book Propaganda, 'The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society... Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism... constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.' While you may not appreciate Bernays' remarks about manipulation and all that this connotes, his reference to the power of public relations cannot be ignored.

In the 1930s, public relations pioneer Carl Byoir is reputed to have invented the bogus grassroots campaign by setting up dummy organisations such as the National Consumers' Tax Organisation to lobby against special taxes on chain stores, a tactic which was carried out at the behest of his client, grocery giant A & P. Retrospectively, this kind of approach seems clearly dishonest to most PR practitioners. Yet a quick perusal of the PR Watch Web site provides a running list of current front groups whose backers and funders are not always transparent – clearly Byoir's legacy. The organisation PR Watch describes itself as one that helps the public 'recognize manipulative and misleading PR practices.' Their two main staff members are John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, co-authors of two recent books mentioned above that take aim at dishonest and manipulative public relations tactics.

The power of PR to shape opinions is one of the most compelling reasons to consider our duties to society and to take care not to abuse that power by the dishonest use of manipulation. But if you think that this kind of manipulative ploy is relegated to the historical roots of modern PR, then think again.

Consider, within recent memory, Hill and Knowlton's campaign to stimulate American public support for the first war against Iraq, for which the Kuwait government reputedly paid them US $10 million for the job. A major part of their strategy involved the creation and distribution of a video news release featuring a young Kuwaiti woman's testimony before a congressional committee. The woman related a startling story of unspeakable Iraqi army atrocities, perhaps the most graphic of which was the story of babies being dumbed from incubators in Kuwait hospitals. Identified only as Nayirah, the girl and her testimony was riveting and destined to achieve public support. Later, enterprising journalists who had not thought to ask about her identity earlier discovered that Nayirah was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, coached for her performance by her PR handler and without any first-hand knowledge that any such atrocities had ever taken place. But, by the time it was discovered the damage was already done: opinions had been formed based on her testimony and action had been taken.

Wouldn't it be better if we just forgot about this stuff and went on with our jobs? After all, most PR practitioners are involved in a wide variety of well-conceived, honest and ethical approaches to achieving mutual support and respect between their clients and their publics. Although this may be true, we all have to stand accountable for what the public sees as the sins of our profession. Indeed, public and media misunderstanding of our motives and objectives can impede our ability to do our work honestly and ethically.

As social trends of the past quarter-century have resulted in the need for more strategic communication between organisations and their publics, there has been a concomitant increasing focus on the ethical behaviour of those organisations. As the interface between the organisation and its publics, and arguably the keeper of the organisational reputation, the PR function has an even more important role as the social conscience of the organisation. Someone has to provide guidance on organisational action for the purposes of considering the greater good. PR is particularly well situated to accomplish this. After all, we are the ones who are supposed to be tracking trends and issues in our economic, political and social environments so that we can propose ways that our clients and organisations can prevent problems and capitalize on emerging opportunities. While carrying out this environmental scanning role we have a distinct opportunity to uncover potential ethical transgressions and to recommend ways to avoid impropriety as well as the appearance of misbehaviour.

It seems clear that the public may be at least partly justified in their negative perception of PR. We can only change that image when every PR practitioner accepts personal and professional responsibility for his or her own actions, and values integrity above all.

The term ethics falls off the tongue very easily these days, yet many people who use it have not taken the time to consider its true meaning.

In the late 1960s, former dean and president of Loyola University in Chicago, Raymond Baumhart (who holds a doctorate in business administration as well as being a Jesuit priest), wrote the now-classic book An Honest Profit: What Businessmen Say About Ethics in Business. He asked businessmen of the age what ethics meant to them to which they gave a variety of responses from references to their feelings about what is right or wrong, through religious beliefs, to doing what the law requires. Some suggested that they did not, in fact, know what ethics really meant at all. Perhaps these were the honest ones.

An examination of what something is not, however, can sometimes be helpful in determining a useful definition of it.

First, ethics is not merely what has become accepted practice within the industry. Just because something wrong has been done over and over again through the years does not make it the right thing to do. Indeed, the history of human existence on this earth has been riddled with activities that were deemed acceptable – slavery, child labour and human sacrifice come immediately to mind. However, just because they were deemed permissible at a certain point in history does not necessarily make them morally acceptable for all times. For example, setting up front groups that hide their true agendas might have been accepted PR practice in the past; however, that does not mean that today's publics are prepared to accept them as morally appropriate.

Second, ethics is not merely a question of figuring out what you can get away with. Not getting caught doing something wrong does not make it right. Doing the right thing only to serve your own needs is often considered to be the hallmark of an individual who is functioning at a low level of moral development. In fact, our prisons are filled with people who thought it was all right to do something if they did not get caught. Thus, from a practical standpoint, it might be time for organisations to consider that being ethical means considering the needs of others as well. Creating a PR campaign that considers only the needs of the organisation without respect for the public's needs could today be construed as unethical.

Finally, ethics is more than simply following the letter of the law. It is a fallacy to assume that everything that is legal is also morally correct; it is equally problematic to presume that everything you consider to be ethical must therefore be legal. Law and morality are related, but they are certainly not the same thing. Organisations that follow the letter of the law and nothing more are clearly looking out for their own needs, without considering the possibility that their responsibility to their communities might be morally dictated rather than simply legally. What they ought to do might be considerably more than what they must do. Now that we have established what ethics is not, perhaps we're a step closer to what it is.

Philosophers define ethics as the study of moral rightness or wrongness, which is limited by the human ability to reason. Our decisions are only as good as our human reasoning abilities. Whereas philosophers have the luxury of simply studying these issues, as professionals we need to be able actually to apply aspects of philosophical rumination. Thus, we can think of 'public relations ethics' as the application of knowledge, understading and reasoning to questions of right and wrong behaviour in the professional practice of PR.

It is clear that the concept of professionalism is closely tied to ethics – professional ethics to be more precise. All you need to do is a quick search of Web sites on professionalism and you will rapidly come up with an extensive listing that is almost entirely sites with the words 'ethics and professionalism'. But what is this elusive notion of professionalism? How important is it? And, closest to home, how do you cultivate it?

Who cares if the public views relations as a profession, an occupation, a vocation or just a job? Evidently, PR associations do. According to the Web site of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, a profession is distinguished by specific characteristics, including 'master of a particular intellectual skill through education and training, acceptance of duites to a broader society than merely one's clients / employers, objectivity and high standards of conduct and performance'. It is this last tenet that places professional ethics squarely in the domain of defining a profession. And it seems clear that from a PR perspective, it is in PR's best interest to be viewed by the public as a profession (rather than an occupation or a job). Whether or not this designation is of any material value doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar screen. That, however, is quite a separate argument. For now, it seems important to a lot of people within our field that it be seen as a profession. It is clearly a part of our image.

So, one might conclude that professionalism is something that is characteristic of only those individuals who are members of so-called professions. Where does that leave all those people whose occupations do not seem to display those characteristics of a profession? Can they not be deemed to have a high level of professionalism? Intuitively, I'm sure you know that they certainly can.

What about the waiter at your favourite restaurant whose professionalism shines through in the way he treats you and his other customers? What about your cleaning lady whose pride in the quality of her work always makes you think that she shows great professionalism? It is this quality of professionalism that sets individuals apart from their peers, even if they don't work in disciplines with high levels of education and training and codes of professional standards (i.e. ethics).

On the other hand, don't you know people who belong to traditional professions such as medicine, law and the clergy whose behaviour clearly indicates a lack of professionalism? One need only read the newspaper every day to see examples of such individuals.

It seems that professionalism is al least partially about respecting other people as you go about your work, and respect is clearly an aspect of ethics. But professionalism is more than this. More than once, I've heard the opinion that professionalism, simply stated, means doing what is right. Is that not what integrity and the application of your ethical standards are all about? Of course it is. But it's more than that.

In his book True Professionalism: The Courage to Care about Your People, Your Clients, and Your Career, writer David Maister suggests that...

... professionalism is predominantly an attitude, not a set of competences... real professionalism has little, if anything, to do with which business you are in, what role within that business you perform, or how many degrees you have. Rather it implies pride in work, a commitment to quality, a dedication to the interests of the client, and a sincere desire to help.

It seems that cultivating professionalism as a personal quality is one of the ways you can move toward an ethical approach to your work in PR.

 

1. expertise – компетенция, знание дела

2. unsavoury – отталктвающий, отвратительный

3. advocacy – пропаганда

4. conceit – самонадеянность, самомнение

5. to pepper – бранить, распекать

6. rampant – сильно распространенный

7. veracity – правдивость, достоверность

8. ample fodder – веское основание

9. bogus – фиктивный, поддельный

10. grassroots – заурядные люди, обыватели; основа, источник

11. dummy – фиктивный, подставной

12. testimony – свидетельство, доказательство

13. to impede – препятствовать, мешать

14. concomitant – сопутствующий

15. hallmark – отличительный признак, критерий

16. to construe – толковать

17. tenet – принцип, доктрина