TO WHOM ARE YOU LOYAL?


We might define a loyalty as ˜a constituent to whom the public relations practitioner owes a duty and who, in return, places a trust in the practitioner. [ 6] Again the issue of trust rears its head. Whereas it is true that when dealing in specific public relations situations you might consider each individual public to be a ˜loyalty that you have a duty toward, in general there are four overriding loyalties in the everyday practice of public relations.

One of the first duties that may come to mind is duty to your employer or client. You took on a particular position with a contract, either written or implied . You do a particular job and your employer or client provides you with monetary compensation. It's a simple relationship when put in these terms. However, to what extent is it necessary for you to be loyal under these circumstances? If the employer says do something, do you do it? Blindly? Without consideration of consequences to others or yourself? What happens when your employer or client expects you to do something that you know will erode the trust of others?

If you consider the case of the newly released drug that we discussed at the beginning of the chapter, you might consider specifically that your loyalty (your duty) to your employer who pays your salary just might conflict with your duties to others such as doctors and patients who trust your organization and its products. It then becomes a matter of placing your loyalties in order of priority ”and this is not a fixed ranking. Situations can alter the priorities.

Arguably even more important ethically than your duty to your employer or client is your duty to society. This is the key to social responsibility. In the drug release situation, consideration should be given to the impact that this kind of communication tactic has on the social fabric and the extent to which society can trust an organization that is perceived to mislead.

Another loyalty that you might consider is your duty to your profession. Public relations as a professional discipline has a public image that is less than spotless in the area of ethics. As we move forward in dispelling some of the long-held opinions about our field, we have a duty to ensure that we practise our profession in an ethical manner. Consideration of public relations as your professional field needs always to be in the back of your mind when you are trying to make well-founded moral decisions.

Finally, and perhaps where you might have begun this examination of loyalties, is your duty to yourself. Indeed, some people believe that one of the most common, if not the most common ethical dilemma that will face all PR practitioners at some point in their careers is to have to make a choice between what the employer or client is asking of them and what they as individuals, and based on their own personal value systems, know to be right.

Clearly, then, as a public relations practitioner, you have duties to yourself, your employer or client, your profession and to society as a whole. Juggling these duties can be a full-time job when trying to practise PR in an ethical manner ( Figure 3.1).

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Figure 3.1: Juggling your loyalties

In another example, consider the public relations instructor who provides career counselling to his graduating students. He knows from years of experience in the industry that those students who complete the two-year programme right after high school, rather than after a university degree or several years of work experience, are not viewed by potential employers as mature enough and will therefore generally have more difficulty finding employment in the PR field than their older, more experienced classmates. So, he counsels them to consider pursuing a university degree and putting off their job search. His boss tells him he can't do this as it contravenes the school's obligation to treat everyone equally.

The instructor's duty to his students, clearly a priority public, is at least as important as his duty to his employer ”hence, the ethical dilemma.

If you consider the ˜pillars of ethical public relations that we discussed in Chapter 2, you might notice that there is a potential here to transgress one of them: to do no harm. A strong argument could be made in both the drug company's situation and the instructor's that there is a potential for harm. The patients could be harmed by the possibility of false hope, and the students could be harmed if they are not provided with honest, candid information based on sound experience of the instructor ”the ethical approach. Ethical living is a balancing act. And juggling the components until we find the right balance is a delicate business.

Clearly, our publics need to be able to trust us. Being certain that our organizations will do them no harm is crucial to that trust.

[ 6] Parsons, P (1993) Framework for analysis of conflicting loyalties, Public Relations Review , 19 (1), p 50




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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