Week 5

I think the two key points to remember from this week’s readings are the various roles of ethics in public relations and how PR practitioners have to exercise ethical practices in order to communicate well with the publics.

Ethics in general refers to personal values that determine the behaviour and moral choices made by someone to respond to a certain situation. In public relations practice, ethical behaviour concerns both the practitioner and its organisation This concerns the personal ethics of the individual and the work or institutional ethics of the organisation.

The readings then made me think of the various roles that public relations practitioner take up. Public relations in today’s context is to “build bridges and alliances with different publics to create a conducive environment in which businesses, government … and other institutions can operate”, as stated in our textbook.
Therefore, four major roles have been identified, in which each of them have their own ethical implications.

1)Role of the counsellor
This involves objective observation and analysis of a situation, and then the advise of strategic solutions to the management. It is absolutely important that the counsellor remain objective and have a broad perspective on an entire industry rather than just their own client’s. Thus good judgement are to be exercised regarding various publics’ expectations about an organisation’s activities.

2)Role of advocate
This is to publicly represent the organisation and their ideas, and then impress this upon the public. Advocacy on the public practitioner’s part is not entirely wrong, but facts and information shouldn’t be distorted, nor should the publics be deceived into believing something that is a lie.

3)Role of corporate monitor
This has the PR practitioner to be duly informed of all activities, so they can interpret and guide the organisation’s actions and policies to match the public’s expectations. Therefore, pro-active behaviour is needed instead of just waiting for mistakes to happen. Reflecting the public’s opinion is one thing, interpreting it and exercising informed judgement is another.

4)Role of corporate conscience
The PR practitioner will be serving as the moral keeper for both the organisation’s communications and actions. They need to look at decisions, policies and actions not only through the eyes of the stakeholders, but also in terms of whether they are the ethical way of behaving.

Most ethical dilemmas comes from social responsibility or relationship issues with the client and its publics. Therefore bridging good relationship between everyone is essential for the success of a PR plan, and for avoiding ethical issues.