Articles

September Is Ethics Awareness Month—Why It’s Important to You

By Ellen Rosen
Director of University News Services at Rochester Institute of Technology, and ethics officer for the PRSA Rochester chapter.

Each September, the Public Relations Society of America sponsors Ethics Awareness Month, a chance for us to focus on how ethics applies to the practice of public relations.

In its code of ethics, PRSA states that it “is committed to ethical practices. The level of public trust PRSA members seek, as we serve the public good, means we have taken on a special obligation to operate ethically. The value of member reputation depends upon the ethical conduct of everyone affiliated with the Public Relations Society of America.”

The code sets core values for advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty and fairness in our dealings with clients, employers, competitors, peers, vendors, the media, and the general public.

This year, the organization set the theme for the month as “Ethics Every Day,” based on the concept that if ethical practice isn’t ingrained in our behavior, we risk making some serious, perhaps even disastrous, mistakes. Given the rapidly changing nature of the communications world, this is incredibly wise advice. PR practitioners no longer have the luxury of focusing only on our message. We have to think just as much about our methods – a newer platform that will best help us reach our audience, how quickly can we measure the effectiveness of our strategy and respond to what we learn.

That’s one reason why the Rochester PRSA chapter decided to focus its Ethics Month program on “PR Ethics in a Social World.” We wanted to take a look at what challenges social media - a significant and highly effective tool in our PR tool kit - is presenting to the ethical practice of public relations.

Our panel of experts - Jon Alhart, vice president, Social and Digital Media at Dixon Schwabl, Heather Hare, director of Communications & Outreach for the Huntington Study Group, and Alyson Shurtliff, manager, Social Media for Eastman Kodak Co. - said that while the ethical responsibilities and guidelines remain the same, social media has brought new challenges to how we respond to our audience.

For instance, the wealth of information so easily available on the Internet has made transparency a requirement. Try to spin a story and watch how quickly that catches up to you. One needs to be transparent in a consistent way that protects your brand.

How do you create sponsored content so that it will be viewed with the same integrity as a report by a third party?

Then there’s the issue of how to deal with persistent critics on social media: people who despite best efforts to resolve issues, may continue to bash your client, your agency, your business. (Hint: sometimes you do have to block them.)

In all, we probably came up with as many issues to ponder as we did answers to questions. But that’s the beauty of what we do for a living. It’s a thinking person’s occupation. And as the national chapter reminds us, ethics is something we must think about, and practice, every day.