As Thanksgiving approaches, I wanted to take a minute and just say how thankful I am to the outstanding students in my Public Relations Ethics class (COM525) as Boston University. We meet once a week for three hours.
We start every class by discussing ethical issues we have seen or read about over the past week. At the start of the semester, I would be lucky if one or two students would share an example. Now, most of the class has their hands up and I need to stop the discussion after 30 minutes.
I firmly believe one of the best ways of relating ethics to management is by sharing stories of challenges and situations. That is what I do every week on EthicalVoices.
But there are other voices as well. Following are 93 ethics issues the students and I identified and discussed. These stories were ripped from the headlines. If you missed them, they are worth another review. They make great reading and great discussion for the dinner table. Most even have nothing to do with politics. And only a few deal with sports….
- A new code of ethics
- Actions Not Words Advocacy or Exploitation? The Ethical Concerns Around Posting Images of Poverty and Addiction
- Are managers and employees held equally accountable for ethics violations?
- Are some topics off limits for CSR and CSJ?
- Are the Boston Red Sox Greenwashing?
- Are unethical and repressive entities entitled to PR counsel
- Banks Cutting Customers with Bad Reputations
- Be aware of your biases:
- Biden’s Student-Loan Forgiveness Program and Conflict of Interest
- Blue Check
- Boston Bruins forget the importance of virtue and character
- Business integrity does not exist in a silo
- Companies are responding appropriately to employee reports… …Unless you are Twitter
- Conflict of Interest and the Supreme Court
- Conflicts of interest
- Cultural appropriation
- Decisions have consequences
- Deepfakes in war
- Disclosure and Transparency from the media side
- Disclosure? Honesty?
- Do ethics matter to employees?
- Do you need an ethics advisor
- Do you want to start an ethics discussion?
- Don’t steal
- Ethical beauty needs to also look at the environment
- Ethically, where can you do business?
- Ethics in the Coffee industry
- Fairness in Artificial Intelligence
- Fairness in Competition
- Fashion, Cultural Appropriate and Stupidity
- Front groups and disclosure
- Get woke go broke?
- Go old school
- Great ethics videos from PRCA
- Healthcare, Russia and Ethics
- How are businesses dealing with Russia and Ukraine today?
- How companies can address their historical transgressions
- How often do we lie?
- How to avoid joining the disinformation ecosystem
- How to be an ethical leader
- Is It Ethical for Employers to Monitor Your Social Media?
- Is it ethical to speak after you are dead?
- Is it ever ethical to represent a country with poor human rights records?
- Is it ever right to sabotage your company?
- Is restricting ideas the answer?
- Is reverse catfishing ethical
- Kyrie Irving and Fairness
- Lack of disclosure
- Lack of Disclosure costs Kim Kardashian $1.2 million
- Leading in an Age of Employee Activism
- Let’s discuss propaganda and democracy
- Misinformation is an international threat
- Misinformation online
- Money, Sports, and Ethics in Australia
- Navigating the Ethical Risks of Doing business in China
- No Changemakers when it comes to DEI
- Page Center Launches Scholar Directory
- Pay Transparency
- Power of fake videos
- PRCA calls out disguised earned media
- Privacy, Crisis and Big Data
- Racism in the NFL
- Repressive countries and disclosure
- Rich Shertenlieb, 98.5 Sports Hub: Virtue-Based Ethics in Action
- Speaking of misinformation
- The Ethics of AI Generated Art
- The ethics of Favela tours
- The ethics of fur trapping
- The ethics of Spotify
- The ethics of virus research and reporting
- The metaverse
- The pope speaks on digital media and ethics
- TikTok as a growing source of political misinformation
- TikTok Search has a misinformation problem
- Too many people still do not have Aristotle’s Virtue of Courage.
- Transparency
- Twitter layoffs
- Unethical or stupid
- Unfair advantages and disclosure
- Virtue matters
- Walking the walk on climate change
- WE Study finds brands must get more practical in addressing society’s problems
- What ethical failures are customers least likely to accept
- What happens when an industry doesn’t have a code of ethics?
- What is Ethical Lobbying?
- When is talking about ethics advertising?
- Which countries do best when it comes to modeling behavior to stop sexual harassment?
- Whistleblowers
- Who controls a company’s purpose?
- Who is liable when AI kills
- Who is responsible for countering misinformation?
- Your Spouse and Conflict of Interest
Mark W. McClennan, APR, Fellow PRSA, is the general manager of C+C's Boston office. C+C is a communications agency all about the good and purpose-driven brands. He has more than 20 years of tech and fintech agency experience, served as the 2016 National Chair of PRSA, drove the creation of the PRSA Ethics App and is the host of EthicalVoices.com
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