Whose Ethics Are You Anyway?

I am a member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). As such, I am obligated to adhere to, and abide by, their Code of Ethics. I’m happy to do so. I’ve found from personal experience that the principles they expound are in everybody’s best interests—the public, my clients, and my own.

The PRSA Code of Ethics is based on six values: advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty and fairness. All of these serve the public interest in some manner and assist in creating a robust environment for informed public debate, especially important to a democracy.

In thinking about the code, I’m going to go back to the theory behind this model. The code, in the largest sense, is a normative theory, meaning that it attempts to describe how practitioners should operate.

Drilling down into normative theory, I believe the code, in some respects, follows other normative theories that attempt to explain how public relations operates. One of these theories is the communitarian model. In this model, the importance of the community is stressed along with the idea that individuals have connections to the community. In short, communitarianism moves away from the idea of individual rights to an idea of social responsibility (see Legal and Ethical Restraints on Public Relations by K. K. Gower).

As applied to public relations, this model encourages practitioners to inspire organizations “to fulfill their responsibilities to communities in which they are a part” (Gower, 10). This is clearly illustrated in the code’s requirement for practitioners to disclose information. Revealing all information to the public in an accurate manner so that informed decision-making can take place is in the best interests of the community at large. The best interests of the organization are subservient to the community’s welfare: what is best for the community will ultimately be best for the organization. The code’s element requiring free flow of information is also communitarian in that it ensures that accurate and truthful information is available to the community. Inherent in protecting the community’s interest requires the practitioner to avoid conflicts of interest and to decline to represent those entities who advocate actions contrary to the code. Even the requirement that practitioners report violators of the code to the appropriate authority is predicated on the welfare of the community and speaks directly to the element of competition found within the code.

The code does have a trace of utilitarianism-ethical acts produce the greatest possible balance of good over bad for everyone affected (Gower, 3). One element is the requirement of practitioners to safeguard confidences of organizations. This is clearly directed to the organization’s preservation without regard for the community’s interests. It denigrates laissez-faire doctrine, for instance, if a community is home to an organization that is the only one to offer a particular service or product.

In other respects, the code is libertarian; certainly releasing all honest information into the public domain places the onus on the audience to ultimately decide which product or service is best.

In my practice, I’ve twice had to make the hard choice to adhere to these principles. In effect, I fired myself in order to remain loyal to the code. That, too, is a communitarian model at work, at least, in the sense that I knew releasing information from these companies, in the manner in which I was asked, would have negatively impacted the community—not to mention the companies involved!

Too many times practitioners are not ready to make these kinds of choices. Thinking about the ramifications of living the code can help prepare you for these worst-case scenarios. And I suspect they are not isolated incidents.

Question of the Week: How many of you public relations practitioners have been asked by an organization to do-si-do with the truth?

Am I standing alone in the pasture?

Linda@the saltlick