This week in PR ethics there were a number of interesting ethical issues raised related to greenwashing, wokewashing and non-profits as well as a chilling report than 75% of all business workplace conversations will be recorded in analyzed in less than a few years.
This week, (well two weeks) the most interesting ethical issues I found tended to have an international flavor, and the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) and ethics was central to many of them. There are also two very interesting (and free) ethics Webinars coming up in the next week.
Following are 100 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 over Zoom
A number of ethical issues this week dealt with technology issues and setting boundaries. What happens when the algorithms become too efficient and lead companies to actions that may be “too human” or inadvertently racist?
Claims of ballot fraud and lists of Trump supporters for potential retaliation are not the only hot ethical issues of the week.
Since those have received so much attention, I wanted to highlight some other interesting issues.
Every media outlet and social channel is blanketed with Presidential election coverage. This blog will give you a break from it all. We will look at ethical issues of the week that have nothing to do with elections: philotimy, racism and disclosure.
With the US elections just a few days away and the divisive, negative rhetoric on all sides being at what seems to me to be an all time high, I thought this week it might make sense to take a look at the oft-overlooked virtue-based approach to ethics.
This week many of the ethics concerns for public relation and communications professionals are about disinformation, misinformation and deepfakes.
This week the most interesting ethics content came down to one theme: ideas. From new frameworks for making decisions, to new failures to consider, and new learnings from South Asia, there is something here for anyone interested in ethics.
As always, I didn’t have a problem finding PR ethics issues to highlight this week. While the limo ride is an obvious example, and one I plan to discuss in class tonight, I wanted to focus on a few other interesting stories including various forms of censorship: