I am presenting a paper, As Clear as Your Conscience: Ethics in PR Practice, at the CIPR Academic Conference at the University of Lincoln on Tuesday, March 22.
Here's the abstract....
As Clear as Your Conscience: Ethics in PR Practice
Abstract of a paper presented to the CIPR Academic Conference, March 2005 by Philip Young, Senior Lecturer, University of Sunderland
It seeks to categorise public relations ethics in two ways: the ethics of diffraction, which applies to the content of PR messages, and the ethics of transaction, which inform business practice.
Under the diffractional model, messages can be split into five categories: true and advantageous to the organisation; true but disadvantageous; neutral; false and made with the intention to deceive; and false but without an intention to deceive.
Although diffractional ethics can embody the tensions and conflicts that outsiders see as the battleground for practitioners it is clear from an analysis of behaviours that the dilemmas which exercise practitioners are often located in the way in which they conduct or transact their business, hence transactional ethics.
The findings are based on empirical research comprising questionnaire responses and one-to-one interviews, primarily in the North East of England. Comparison is made between patterns exhibited by cohorts of private and public sector practitioners, regional and national, conducted over several months.
The author concludes that although practitioners may strive to act ethically they often lack the training and critical capacity to apply this in a structured manner. The suggestion is made that practitioners must first understand the model of PR in which they (seek to) operate before they can establish frameworks in which they can make ethical decisions, most notably whether they position themselves as information providers or advocates.
Crucially, Young concludes that much of what is presented as ethical conduct is merely a manifestation of prudent business practice.
March 2005
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