Essay On Public Relations Ethics

Public relations practitioners are faced with many challenges when it comes to abiding to the code of ethics in public relations, and making sure that they are accountable to the interest of the community, their clients and employers. In most situations these three groups of people have different expectations, values and beliefs, hence realistically it is very difficult to achieve perfect symmetry. As a result, practitioners are faced with many ethical dilemmas, as the area of ethics is a grey area.

The definition of ethics explained by Parsons (2008) stated that public relations ethics is the application of knowledge, understanding and reasoning to questions on what is that right or wrong behaviour in professional practice of public relations.

Huang (2001) said that these codes are crucial for public relations to be granted a status as a bona-fide profession. The codes strive to give guidance to public relation practitioners in order to help them to act in a practical and professional manner. However even though these codes are fashioned to satisfy universal conditions and principles (Kruckeberg, 1993), many scholars like (Parkinson, 2001; Wright, 1993) voiced out their opinion that the codes fall short of the ideas promoted in the codes, or even being internally conflicting. Many other practitioners have also voiced their opinion that the code of ethics is too vague to be useful, and that it does not give enough specifications (Bowen,

It also states that ethics and the law typically go hand in hand, however it is not always the case, as the law must be based on ethical principles for it to be legitimate, and not only on their legal implementation by fear of being punished, ethical principles must take superiority when the law disagrees with ethics (Breit, 2007). Breit (2007) wrote that practitioners should choose the ethical choice rather than following the law, however the choices must be motivated by the right reasons, and the consequences of action must be well thought