CROSSING THE LINE

Although in the normal course of a PR practitioner's work, writing for hire and ghosting are completely acceptable industry standards, we can become complacent about this and fail to recognize when we are crossing the ethical line.

First, there is the possibility of outside observers (such as Mr Cohen) perceiving this as somehow unethical. Although we have established that we are, by definition, not actually plagiarizing, we could be committing some other kind of ethical transgression as evidenced by the history of high-profile PR practitioners inventing quotes in suc pieces as news releases, without clearance from those who have been fictitiously quoted. Creating quotes or any other material for that matter that is subsequently cleared through proper channels, as is the usual way of operating, is acceptable practice, as long as there is no possibility of misleading the public. This is the key. This misleading can result in deception which is clearly unethical. The perception of outsiders that our work is misleading by its nature can have detrimental consequences for the image of the entire field as we have seen too many times.

The slippery slope into ethical transgression comes when a PR practitioner who creates quotes with the clear recognition that this is acceptable practice begins to think that clearances are somehow unnecessary. This is when the label of dishonesty starts to become legitimate .

Consider a second kind of situation that crosses the ethical line. When a newspaper editor writes a laudatory opinion piece about someone who has come under recent public scrutiny, the public does, indeed, expect that the newspaper editor himself and not the individual in question has written the piece. Newspaper editors as members of the journalism field are expected to be either writing objective reports , or expressing their own opinions in editorials and columns . If they are expressing someone else's opinions , the reading public expects this to be made transparently clear. Public relations, however, is different, has different objectives and therefore uses different ethical criteria to judge the morality of its actions.

What about when a public relations writer writes the opinion piece and then the organization's CEO puts his or her by-line on it? Or you have prepared the Executive Director's letter for the Annual Report and he or she reads it and signs it? Is this a situation of the person who signs it using ideas and words that are unauthorized? Of course not, but should the words be acknowledged ? If the words are simply the communication method by which the individual's own ideas are presented, rather than someone else's ideas, then, in consideration of the pillars of public relations ethics, this cannot be considered to be unethical. It is no more unethical than an organization hiring outside graphic designers to create a new logo.

Any attempt to cover the true source of the thoughts and ideas, however, is the kind of situation that is to be avoided by ethical PR practitioners. It harms our publics, our profession and eventually our careers.