Ethics and Law

The Public Relations Society of every country has put together a list of ethical guidelines they expect all public relations managers, no matter what business they are in, to follow. Most companies will make some kind of ethical guidelines and put in place the behaviour they expect their employees to follow. These guidelines are put in place to set standards of honesty and goodwill for all public relations representatives to follow.

I think as PR practitioners we must understand a few concepts of ethics. If we fail to address an issue ethically we may get into legal trouble. So let me explain some generally used words in law to define unethical practices.

Defamation is a publication of material that would lead to hatred, ridicule, contempt, or spite. There are two types of defamations: libel and slander

Libel is when you publish something against someone and the person can sue you for libel.

Slander is a spoken word or gesture defamation.

The other concepts we must understand are:

Product Liability it is a legal responsibility of organizations to compensate individuals for injury or damages caused by defects in their products or services.

Malice it is when a company knew about the issues, its harmfulness, and did nothing about it or covered it up.

Privacy Rights is an invasion, appropriation, intrusion, false light issues.

Perrier case study

One example of a business that acted ethically and was rewarded for their honesty was Perrier, who is a company that has been regarded as one of the most well-known companies for producing and selling sparkling mineral water.

When the company found out that traces of Benzene, a harmful chemical that could make any customer sick, in thirteen of their water bottles in the United States, they could have easily played it off as a mishap since it was only thirteen bottles out of the millions they sell each year.

However, Perrier acted ethically and pulled all bottles off the shelves in the United States. They came up with a successful public relations tactic of communicating the concern of Benzene in their water to the public and were completely honest with their customers.

While some of their customers could have gotten really angry for the mistake, most of them accepted Perrier’s apology based on the idea that they were honest and took a “safety-first” approach to their product.

As a result, Perrier was hardly criticized and retained most of their customer base . Because Perrier acted ethically and in the bet interest for their customers, there were no reports of Perrier’s customers getting sick due to their mistake and they are still a successful company.

If they had not acted ethically, the risk of someone getting sick would have been much higher, resulting in more damage to Perrier’s image.

Moral of the story is that ethical behaviour is the choice of an individual.

Who determines ethical behaviour?

According to Josephson Institute ethics are ‘standards of conduct that indicate how one should behave based on moral duties and virtues.’ I agree with Holt that a lot of questions are raised by PR professionals about ethics. What will be called an ethical behaviour? Who determines ethical behaviour- the company where to work, your own morals or the PR code of Ethics? What if they are conflicting?

First let me distinguish morals from ethics. Morals are personal and individual to you. They are often entrenched values and principles that are shaped by your upbringing. Ethics on the other hand is a study of morals. And it develops structured and consistent frameworks to help people make decisions based on open principles.

There are four principles of Potter(not Harry Potter!). One, get your facts and define the situation. Two, Identify your values. Three, Select your principles. Four, select your loyalties- which of the stakeholders will you favour.

I think the tide turns here. When you go through the first three principles and presume you are making a good ethical choice, you are faced with the greatest dilemma of your professional life. Whom to favour?

When you have a family to take care of, a job that you wish to hang on (whatever are the reasons) so who will you favour then? Is this the reason that the scale always tilts towards the employer’s side. Is then the decision taken or advice given ethical?