Ethics in Communication and Public Relations - Research Paper Example

Ethics in Communication and Public Relations Normative ethics is one of the branches of philosophical ethics which has the objectives of investigating the questions that arise when tackling moral issues. It simply means that it is the study of the ethical actions for one involved in the communication sector. Normative ethics also examines the standards for the wrongness and rightness of actions. In its definition, public relations are the structured practices of managing the flow of information between the public and individuals or a specific organization. Public relations also involves the organizations or individuals gaining exposure to their audiences using different topics, debates which are of public interests and news articles mostly requiring no direct payment (Seitel, 2007). According to Messina (2007), the aim of public relations in the company is to persuade the members of the public, their investors, employees, partners and other different stakeholders associated with it. The company persuades all the stakeholders to maintain a certain point of view about their products and services, the leadership and other issues including the political decisions. Some common activities involved in communication to public include speaking at conferences, working with the press to deliver information, and the entire communication by employees to the general public (Rubel, 2007). In this aspect therefore, normative ethics is applied by the individuals or organizations to determine the information delivered to the public if they are true or false. The amount earned globally in communication sector, specifically in advertisements have barely declined and most of the traditional media outlets have declined their circulations in favor of social media and online news sources. The death of newspapers as a means to pass information to the public was even tracked as explained by Paul (2008).There is more focus in public relations as the traditional media shifts to online media have shown that, the trend is motivated by social media releases. Moreover, content publishing, search engine optimization and the podcasts introduction again powers the same trend (Lee, 2009). This has resulted to high speed of the breaking news and creating constraints on responses from the audience to the events as they happen. As the time goes, companies have increasingly utilizing the social media channels such as blogs and websites. The communication in the media is categorized in two-way view which is symmetrical and asymmetrical (Nyhan, 2012). In the symmetrical public relations model, organizations takes interests of the public in a careful considerations seeking a balance between interests of the public and interests of the entire organizations. In asymmetrical public relations, the organizations get the feedback from the public and use it as a backbone of structuring their strategies to persuade the public. The two models help the organizations to get the exact information from the public, therefore, giving true information for their image as a perception to their objectives. There are different disciplines which are commonly used in public relations which include, internal communications involving communicating within the company itself or the society. Again, there are the financial public relations which give information of financial results and business strategies. There are lifestyle public relations which involves gaining the publicity for a particular service or products. Crisis communication is where there is communication of responses to a certain crisis or issue which affects the public. Government relations are another discipline where the organizations engage the governmental departments in order to influence the public policies. There are different typical activities which occur in each discipline mentioned above including the speaking opportunities, newsletters, and publicity events such as campaigns etc., social media. According to David (2006), the relationship between those who influence audiences towards the organization or individuals plays an important role in practicing public relation and communication. Thus, the relationship must be well built and managed as it is vital to create a positive image of the organization towards the audience and avoid a false communication. The importance of a good communication or public relation towards the individual or the organization is to get or identify the targeted audience and persuade each audience on the tailored messages. It is a necessity for the company to create several distinct messages but must be complementary due to interests of the differing stakeholders or audiences. In relation to ethical issues, public relations’ field is mostly un-regulated although many professionals adhere to the code of conduct in a voluntarily manner (Marshall, 107-112). This is deemed to avoid the exposure for the ethical violations. Some companies also work on destroying the targets’ reputation known as the negative public relation which the main objectives is to discredit the competitors of their clients as they pose a major threat to his or her business of a rival in politics. The major fields where the negative public relations are mostly practiced include competitive intelligence, social engineering, and IT security among others. The mostly common techniques used include producing the misleading facts on the target audience in order to fool the competitor (Bike, 2004, Web). There are also different claims that the negative public relations may be highly beneficial and moral for the general public. Since the fear of losing the reputation is a technique of disciplining the companies. The negative public relations also help the public to know the exposed legitimate claims against the organizations and their competitors. In normative ethics, there are disagreements from different sectors about what gives the rules, actions or disposition in its ethical pressure. Generally speaking, there are three perceptions which compete in elaborating how moral questions should be answered. Firstly, there is virtue ethics which focuses on the personal character of those who are acting. Both consequential ethics and deontological ethics focus on the status of the rules, actions or even disposition itself. Although there are various existing codes of ethics have differences, most of them share a common elements which includes accuracy, truthfulness, fairness, public accountability and objectivity. These elements apply to the acquisition of information ready for dissemination to the entire public. Failure to their observation, the public relation of the organization or individual becomes a liability of a legal action in the jurisdiction. This is due to the fact that, a false information is given to the public. In conclusion, public relation in the communication sector is vital in delivering the information to the public as well as creating more customers for companies advertising the products or services. It is also learnt that, negative public relations is sometimes important in the general public as it exposes a certain company’s legitimate claims as poses by their competitors. False information delivered also can affect the public in fields such as health where a bad drug can be advertised positively leading to poisoning of unsuspecting members of the public (Caulfield, 2012). The codes of ethics are bound to the legal ethics where one can be sentenced of its violations and normative ethics determines individual or organizations to deliver either true or false information to the public. Works cited Andrew Revkin. Journalist Resource: Covering and Using Scholarship. Shorenstein Center, Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government Bike, William S. Campaign Guide: Negative Campaigning, 2004. Available at: CompleteCampaigns.com. San Diego. Retrieved on February 26, 2013. Caulfield, Happiness. The Cure for Everything: Untangling Twisted Messages About Health, Fitness and Happiness. Boston, MA: Beacon, 2012 David Phillips. Towards relationship management: Public relations at the core of organizational development, Journal of Communication Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2006 Lee Odden, Media Relations Blog. "Testing SEO & Social Media Readiness: 6 Questions." August 25, 2009. Available at: www.mediarelationsblog.com/276/testing-seo-social media-readiness-6-questions/. Retrieved February 26, 2013. Marshall, Tim. "Ethics – Who needs them?". Journal of Communication Management. 2002, 7 (2): 107–112. doi:10.1108/13632540310807313. ISSN 1363-254X Messina, A. Public Relations, the public Interest and persuasion: An Ethical Approach. Journal of communication Management, 2007, 11(1): 29 Nyhan, B. Addressing the Asymmetry Question: Fact-checking is the wrong format. Columbia Journalism Review Online, 2012 Paul Gillin, Newspaper Death Watch, 2008. Available online at: http://newspaperdeathwatch.com/. Retrieved February 26, 2013 Rubel, Gina F., Everyday Public Relations for Lawyers, Doylestown, PA: 1 ed. 2007, ISBN 978- 0-9801719-0-7 Seitel, Fraser P. The Practice of Public Relations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007, 10e. Read More