AN EPIDEMIC OF LYING


Everyone lies. It has become a fact of the human condition. And you need not protest your own absolute honesty. If you have ever told a friend (or spouse or sibling) that you like her gruesome sweater or his obnoxious girlfriend, or instead have chosen to say something non-committal, you've chosen a path that is just short of absolute honesty. You have your reasons, you say, and you might even find an ethicist who can accept your motivation for dishonesty. These little untruths oil the machinery of interpersonal communications, or at least this is what we believe. Besides, you continue with your rationalizing, there's a difference between a ˜little white lie and a big lie. Clearly, we all draw the line both personally and professionally. There are some lies we will tell, while there are others that seem just beyond the pale. What is unclear is the difference between that little lie and the important ones. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth seems relegated to the courtroom oath.

Most recognized religions, where many of us receive our first introduction to values, expound on the requirement to tell the truth. The Ten Commandments taught many PR professionals with a Judeo-Christian background their first lesson in truth telling. Most other religious traditions, however, also have their guidelines regarding the virtue of telling the truth. For example, there is the Buddhist Eightfold Path, one point of which is ˜right speech, the first element of which is abstaining from false speech. Indeed, you'd be hard-pressed to find a religious tradition that didn't touch on this as a fundamental ”moral principle. Yet, we continue to tell those ˜little white lies in our personal lives with an inevitable spill-over into our professional lives.




Ethics in Public Relations. A Guide to Best Practice
Ethics in Public Relations: A Guide to Best Practice (PR in Practice)
ISBN: 074945332X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 165

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