|
by
Peter
O'Malley
O'Malley
Communications
(Continued)
I
offer the following four
propositions which give public
relations an ethical foundation:
- We
live in a society which
espouses and values
"freedom of the
press," which in practice
means that the only people who
can control what is reported
are those who own media, and
who can therefore assign and
pay the reporters, and start
and stop the presses.
- Reporters
in our society operate
according to a standardized
set of reporting protocols and
practices which, in general,
shape and determine the
reporting outcome, which is
the published or broadcast
news report.
- Through
study and experience, a person
can develop expert knowledge
of the standard reporting
formulae. Using this expert
knowledge, it is then possible
to intervene in the reporting
process in a manner that has a
reasonable chance of
influencing the reporting
outcome in predictable ways.
This is what public relations
professionals do.
- Finally,
our society affords
individuals the right to try
to manage their self-defined
interest in the reporting
process as they see fit,
within the parameters of the
law. Persons can therefore
avail themselves, by financial
or other inducements, of the
services of those who are
expert in doing this.
Thus
understood, the very existence of
public relations is rooted in our
societal commitment to freedom of
the press, and to the freedom
given to citizens to look after
their interests in dealing with
media. If you don't have a free
press and free citizens, you don't
need PR people. This is why
totalitarian regimes deploy
propagandists, who disseminate
information through controlled
media, but have no domestic need
for PR practioners who are
skilled at influencing reporting
outcomes, but who do not control
it.
From
these propositions it follows that
the "public good" served
by public relations lies in our
ability to promote the
lawfully-pursued, self-defined
interests of those we serve. This
means that the central ethical
decision to be made by a public
relations professional is not
tactical, it is whether or not to
undertake a particular assignment,
and to cash a particular cheque.
Further, it means that unethical
professional conduct is any
conduct which deliberately
undermines the interests of the
client, in breach of the contract
with them.
It
is apparent from this that it is
the practitioner's personal view
of the ethics of the client's
interests that circumscribes their
ethical conduct. PR ethics are not
defined by the techniques of a
public relations intervention,
such as deciding what to disclose
and not to disclose, to whom, when
and how. Nor are PR ethics rooted
in the transcendent values of
honesty, accuracy, integrity and
truth in public communications. If
we are ethical as PR
practitioners, it means we choose
to serve clients whose
self-defined interests are, in our
view, ethical. Or we clear out.
Period.
So
where does "public
enlightenment" come into the
picture? In a free society with a
free press, PR and public
enlightenment meet up like this:
the responsibility of the
newsmaker, or their PR agent, is
to advance those facts and
advocate those views that they
want the public to receive;
reporters, for their part, have a
responsibility to report all the
facts and viewpoints they can
gather which they feel are
relevant so as to allow them to
present a fair and balanced
account of the matter being
reported. Public enlightenment
should be the goal, and end
result, of this dynamic process.
In
practice, needless to say, this
process seldom works perfectly,
but in the long run, it works
reasonably well, or at least
better than any apparent
alternative, provided everyone
does their job right. However,
confounding the role of the public
relations professional in this
process with that of the
journalist, serves neither the
process, the profession, our
clients, or the public interest.
It is, at best, a muddle-headed
self-deception. Ultimately, it
makes us look foolish, or
dishonest, or both.
Time
for a Code rethink, I'd say.
First page > In
Praise of Secrecy > Page 1,
2
Peter
O'Malley is an Ottawa-based
communications consultant who has
been a member of the Canadian
Public Relations Society for 15
years, and has served on the Board
of Directors
of the Ottawa
Society.
http://www.omalco.com
| omalley@omalco.com
©
Copyright O'Malley Communications
Inc. (Reprinted with permission)
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