Mark Dvorak the executive director of Golin Atlanta and an expert independent consultant, discusses the three biggest threats to ethical behavior in public relations. During the interview he also shares his insight on a variety of topics, including: what ethical guideposts to use when you are facing a new situation and how managers should support their employees in difficult ethical situations.
This week on Ethical Voices, Robin Schell and Stacey Smith, senior counsel and partners at Jackson, Jackson & Wagner discuss a number of key PR and communication ethics issues, including:
• What to do when a client asks you to anonymously leak information
• Ethical issues with transparency and in-person research
• How to ethically leverage appeals to emotion
• The one ethics guidepost every PR pro needs to keep top of mind
Angela Sinickas the CEO of Sinickas Communications, discusses a number of key issues, including:
• What to do ethically when you realize you work at a company rife with sexism and racism
• Ethical missteps in the PR proposal process
• How ethics mistakes can haunt you for years (and how to overcome them)
• How to ethically deal with people with an agenda
Dr. Joe Trahan, a 30+ year PR pro, retired Lt. Col and media trainer for more than 3,000 people a year, shares his ethics insights in a captivating interview. He discusses:
• How to save your soul when you are in an unethical company
• How fake news is eroding public trust
• Why public relations professionals and PRSA need to be stronger advocates for our profession
• The importance of standing up for what you believe in even in the face of unspeakable threats of violence
Kim Sample, president of the PR Council discusses a number of key ethics issues, including:
• How to handle unethical client requests
• Best practices for building an ethical agency culture
• Ethical challenges with controversial clients and employee activism
Brandi Boatner, the Social and Influencer Communications Lead global markets for IBM addresses a number of communications ethics issues including:
• How can public relations professionals prepare for techlash?
• What questions should PR pros ask to help avoid unconscious bias in campaigns and AI?
• How can social pros best run an ethical influencer campaign?
• Generational challenges with fake news
Good morning. Today is Labor Day in the United States, so this week I will be taking a break from my labors of bringing you insightful ethics content. Rest assured, I have great interviews already in the hopper for September. But September is an important month. It is PRSA’s Ethics
Mike Neumeier, the CEO of Arketi Group, shares his insight on how PR pros can deal with ethics issues, including:
• What to do when a manager or competitor overpromises
• How and when to disclose
• Unexpected challenges with paid media
Adam Ritchie, the principal of Adam Ritchie Brand Directions, discusses a number of controversial ethical issues, including why it’s time to stop PR’s addiction to fake newswire metrics.
Other topics include:
• A lighting round of four ethical dilemmas he faced
• The insidious practice of double billing
• How Amazon is hurting public relations measurement
Chris Penn, the co-founder and chief data scientist for Trust Insights, is one of the most insightful communications professionals I know.
In this interview, he discusses:
• What to do when your personal ethics conflict with your company’s ethics
• Ethical issues PR people will face with artificial intelligence (AI)
• What questions communications pros should ask their data scientists
• The scary thing about FaceApp people have overlooked