Public Relations Ethics is a Responsibility Not an Inconvenience

It’s happened to all of us at least once. Those of us who are interested in working in public relations have grown accustomed to the skeptical, judgmental responses to the declaration of our career interests from friends and family.

“So you’re just going to lie to people for a living?” Or maybe, “So you’re going to be manipulating people’s emotions to move product?”

There are many more that have been uttered but they all touch on the same ideas. The field of public relations has a reputation of deceit, manipulation and propaganda in the eyes of many, and it’s at least partially deserved. From the original P.T. Barnum ads to war propaganda to even recent stories like this recent case by the Fox News PR team, public relations professionals have brought this kind of reputation on themselves. And this should be concerning. Not only is it important to follow ethical guidelines just for the sake of morality, but public relations reputation for unreliability hurts its effectiveness.

When an industry is based on communicating a message to the masses, it relies on an assumption that your audience is receptive to what you have to say, and currently, that isn’t true. How can you effectively promote your brand if your audience believes they can’t trust what you are saying from the start? You can’t and that’s part of the reason that it is absolutely essential that the next generation of public relations practitioners make ethical practice a cornerstone of their work. Working in the industry we know that the majority of people working in public relations or any of its related subsets from community relations to crisis communication to publicity are all decent, ethical people. But only through being aggressively and consistently accountable and ethical even when it’s hard can we change that perception and improve public relations for the better.

Tim Bluhm
University of Minnesot
Jour 3279
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