We have the first ever “theme week” on This Week in PR Ethics. During “unprecedented situations” and times of crisis, people look for ethical leadership. Some people step up, and some people don’t. Even good people make ethical missteps. I was intrigued to find so much discussion on ethical leadership this week, so I decided to dedicate the entire blog to the topic.
Quentin Langley, the author of Brandjack and an Adjunct Professor discusses a number of fascinating topics related to ethics in public relations. Specifically:
1. What to do if one of your students is accused of apostasy and treason?
2. Can ethical PR pros really follow the “Do not lie” maxim?
3. Global ethics challenges
4. Ethical challenges with brandjacking
This week’s PR ethics highlights are a bit unusual, many of them brought me joy and had me whooping and clapping my hands and frankly scaring my family and students. There were articles that looked at utilitarianism, stoicism, virtue and the nature of news.
Anne Green, a principal and managing director at G&S Business Communications, discusses a number of important ethical issues including:
1) How to ethically handle pressure to fudge numbers
2) Where to find engaging, compelling ethics training and why it matters
3) How to ethically fight back against disinformation
This week three things stood out when it came to PR ethics: Is banning unpopular speech stopping misinformation or cancel culture? What goes into ethics intelligence? What are the ethics of remote work?
Marcy Massura, the CEO of MM & Company, discusses client dishonesty, Wikipedia, PR super powers and how they are misused, and inherent ethical biases in the social media infrastructure.
This week there were quite a few ethics in communication issues to highlight, including many that may have a profound impact on society. Are we seeing the rise of the long-term surveillance state? Are businesses really putting stakeholders first? What are the ethics of grants and what do Canadians think about PR and ethics?
Ethics and political communication. It is an essential topic, but one that is not often discussed. Joining me on this week’s episode is Peter Loge, Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs, and director of the project on ethics and political communication at George Washington University to discuss:
1) What are the true ethical challenges most communicators face?
2) Why “The Stakes are High” is an insidious ethical temptation
3) Is political communication today very different from the 1700s?
This week the top ethical issues continued to revolve around COVID-19 ethical missteps – from how to communicate effectively (and what NOT to do), to an interesting piece on how charitable giving by companies may actually be unethical and break the law in some cases. Employee communication was also a hot topic: from the ethics of employee monitoring to debate about is a press secretary can do their job without holding briefings.
Ken Jacobs, ACC, CPC, an experienced consultant and certified coach shares his insight on a number of ethics topics including:
1) How to handle abusive clients
2) How to best handle conflicts of interest
3) The difference between coaching and consulting