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The Public Relations Society of America’s ethical guidelines are perhaps the industry’s most widely recognized code for ethics. They cover the necessity for honesty, accuracy, integrity, and confidentiality. The Professional Standards Advisories (PSAs), designed to keep the PRSA code timely, address PR-specific areas and modern practices, including recording conversations, use of interns, video news releases, pay-for-play journalism, and disclosure guidelines.
Both codes are quite comprehensive and benefit PR agencies and companies when followed. But are they comprehensive enough? Perhaps it’s time for PR to adopt some of journalism’s ethical guidelines. PR inherently serves the public (it’s in the name), and PR practitioners are functioning more as journalists; more PR content is now reaching the public directly without review and without editing by independent journalists.
With this in mind, we’ve examined some principles from The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, not (yet) covered in PRSA’s code, that PR pros ought to consider adopting....
Welcome to the IPR’s Organizational Communication Research Center (OCRC), your comprehensive source for game-changing employee communication research, best practices and measures. If you want to learn more about engaging employees, building trust and improving communication climate, this is the place.... [Excellent resources for internal & employee communications ~ Jeff]
Of all the professional skill groups that can be included in the marketing toolkit, public relations is the most ridiculous (PR is also used for public affairs and other non-marketing activities). Filled with backwards unethical and untrained professionals that consistently spam people and promote attention metrics instead of actual outcomes, the PR profession can’t help its poor image.... [OUCH! - JD]
The Public Relations Society of America’s “international effort to modernize the definition of public relations” is a wildly entertaining failure. They’d have more luck trying to modernize the definition of the cathode-ray-tube TV....
When we last left you, you were chewing over PRSA's final three choices for the new public relations definition of the millennium. I have an alternate PR definition you can’t resist!...
Three responses dominate PRSA’s effort to modernize the definition of public relations: angst, apathy and anger/annoyance. Which camp are you in? I’m in the annoyance camp. I think PRSA’s campaign to crowdsource a new definition was well-intended. Predictably, the three final choices feel like they were designed by committee. Instead of designing a racehorse, we get to choose from three camels....
...Back in the 1920's, Edward Bernays -- the man who would be crowned “the father of public relations” -- rhetorically asked in his essay "Propaganda," "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?” And he wasn’t just supposin’. Bernays -- who was related to Sigmund Freud by both his mother (Freud’s sister) and father (whose sister married Freud) -- knew a few things about crowd psychology and other psychoanalytic approaches to public relations, which he described as “the engineering of consent.”...
The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) today issued a statement condemning the unethical communication practices of Mike Winder, mayor of West Valley City, Utah. Mr. [Speaking of bad PR... JD]
Most of us are familiar with the old adage that you “don’t pick fights with people who buy their ink by the barrel.” And indeed, as someone who’s worked with reporters for a long time, I try not upset them. Elephants have long memories and heavy feet under which you don’t want to get stuck.... PRSA and O'Dwyer talk? Call me when hell freezes over ;-)
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It didn't hit me until I tried to teach it, but the most recent definition of public relations offered by the Public Relations Society of America is wrong. It isn't a little bit wrong. It's a whole lot wrong. It's wrong because public relations is not a strategic communication process. There is much more to it than that. Even my students crinkled their brows when the full force of comparison was offered for consideration. And then I gave them a working definition I've been crafting for some time....
I was very pleased to see the PRSA's Board of Ethics and Professional Standards held a discussion to address the issue I raised in a previous Repman blog entitled: 'Bait and switch with a twist.' The blog concerned a new twist on the large agency world's propensity to bait-and-switch team members in order to win a piece of business. The wrinkle in this particular case was the agency's failure to tell the unsuspecting client that each and every team member was a freelancer! The client, frustrated by her inability to reach team members, finally called the large agency's HQs and was told “...no one by those names worked at the firm.” The client was appalled, and so was I....
...At this point, a feeling of déjà vu may be coming over some of you who are in the field of public relations. Don’t you feel like you’ve seen this before? I know I did. In fact, I believe I saw something like this in a textbook I am using for my PR Research course I’m teaching this year. So, I did a little bit of my own research. Turns out, I have seen something like this before. It came from a bunch of guys named Cutlip, Center and Broom and their definition of public relations....
...Looking past the rhetoric and reaction, what’s become clear to us is that the process should not stop here. For that reason, PRSA is going to keep the Public Relations Defined blog up after the winning definition is announced.... In our perfect vision for this blog, it will become a virtual water cooler, where we can continue to engage professionals on the definition of public relations; it will attract broad interest from individuals from across the spectrum, including traditionalists and non-traditionalists, academics and professionals, agency and corporate, profit and non-profit, domestic and international, critics and supporters alike; and it will advance public relations in a spirit of professional respect, cooperation and empathy.... [PRSA keeps PR Defined conversation going and open mind - JD]
What’s the definition of public relations? Wait . . . don’t answer. You don’t have to. Because the Public Relations Society of America is coming up with the definitive definition of public relations. And they are serious about it. Serious enough to create a “Task Force,” to study the problem. Which is pretty damned serious. If you’re a little serious about something, you put together a work team. If you’re really serious, you form a committee. Only if you’re super, duper serious, do you convene a Task Force. And that’s just what PRSA did.... [Steve Crescenzo takes out PRSA's PR definitions - JD]
David C.Rickey, the secretary and chair of the PR Defined Task Force, responds to the robust debate about the three possible definitions of ‘public relations.’... While the objections to the finished product are not overwhelming, there are certain themes of dissatisfaction that we have noticed among detractors.... Regardless of what you think of the final candidate definitions, you can rest easy that no one is forcing you to adopt the “winning” definition. PRSA will, and if you’d like to do the same, great; if not, that’s fine too. Finally, let’s remember that we will be judged by our performance and our results, not by how we define ourselves.
Late last year, PRSA announced a new initiative to redefine public relations with a more modern definition through their Public Relations Defined campaign. The definition hasn’t been revised since the 1980s, and with the rapidly changing media landscape, it may just be time to think about how our profession has changed. Using crowdsourcing techniques, PRSA has announced three candidate definitions and is asking for feedback in the comments section of this hyperlinked post – final responses due today....
That was the question posed by PRNewswer Editor Tonya Garcia in an article about what she called the "ongoing feud" between the J.R. To answer Ms. Garcia’s question, yes, I am tired of it. PRSA members also are tired of it, especially those who have been personally targeted by Publisher Jack O’Dwyer, but more on that later. The latest shotgun blast in this “feud” stems from PRSA’s decision not to extend press credentials to Mr. O’Dwyer, which would have allowed him to “report” on our Leadership Assembly meeting and International Conference, which took place Oct. 15-18, in Orlando, Fla....
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I personally don't agree with this. The CMA code of ethics for pr are thorough enough. They demonstrate honesty, accuracy and integrity and much other things, all of which relate to situations your most likely to be bound in as a pr practitioner. There is a significant difference between journalism and PR, and personally, our code of ethics are just right and cover enough.