Public Relations Ethics

According to the PR readings, the most frequently appeared word in this chapter is all about ethic in Public Relations. To be frankly, ethic is a word which gives me a feeling of abstract, something very formal when I first heard this word. However, ethic always being an central or significant role in whatever situations such as management and public relations as well because it is about our standards of our good behavior affects the whole society and involves morals and values.

Apparently, it is easily for us to find great numbers of unethical behaviors in our modern world. Copyright is one of the most commonest actions which considers as unethical for every people, especially for filmmakers or musicians. For students who are using direct quotes or sentences from any printed article without doing in-text reference or reference lists are also considered as unethical and will be penalized by school. Above are some sample of unethical out of huge amount, and I totally agree that understanding what is considered as unethical can help us to work towards understanding what is ethical.

Well, the three steps for PR practitioners to become ethical are willingness, knowledge and skill. Willingness is the most fundamental element that people need to start a journey. Only if almost every people including PR practitioners are willing to do something, but are not forced by any power, they are likely to achieve success. For example, if PR practitioners are willing to be ethical, means to compare everything they did to their morals or a sense of consciences, they will be ethical at the end.

Knowledge can be fostered by reading or thinking. Obviously, the more you read the articles or journals about ethic, the more ethical person you will be. Furthermore, knowledge will provide an orientation point for starting the journey to become ethical.

The final step to become ethical for PR practitioners is to master skills, which means discussing, practicing, combining or selecting. However, to be skillful is not only to read lots of books or to think more, but also to become actively engaged with.

Therefore, these are all the steps we ought to know and learn before being ethical in whatever places, especially for PR study as well.