Chapter 11: Media Relations--Breeding Ground for Ethical Problems

OVERVIEW

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

”Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)

Three people meet in a coffee shop and begin discussing a wide range of topics, finally settling on a discussion of the world's oldest profession. Each of the three claims that their profession is worthy of that distinction. The first person was a surgeon who argued that surgery was clearly the world's first profession because Eve was created from Adam's rib. ˜Taking a rib from Adam obviously required a surgical procedure, hence surgery must be the oldest profession.

The second, an environmental activist, was not impressed. She pointed out that long before Adam and Eve, there was chaos. ˜Obviously, it took someone highly skilled and committed to social change to bring order out of chaos ”clearly an activist. So, it was activism, not surgery, that was the world's oldest profession.

The third person was a politician. He sat and listened politely, but was not the slightest bit impressed. Finally, on behalf of politicians everywhere, he simply asked, ˜Who do you think created the chaos in the first place?

Every profession, it seems, believes that it is the first, the best and, generally speaking, on the higher moral ground. And there are few professions that more frequently compare themselves to one another than public relations and the media. If a journalist , as a representative of the media, considers his or her profession in relation to those of us who are in the field of public relations ”I hardly need to tell you what that thought is likely to encompass .

The problem is, however, that journalists need public relations people every bit as much as PR people need them. In fact, the journalism literature suggests that 40-50 per cent or more of all the news that's reported on any given day has its origin in PR departments in business, government and non-profit organizations. Media relations, then, is probably one of the most important, and certainly the most high profile of the strategies that public relations uses to communicate and develop relationships with publics. This means that the relationship between public relations and the media as an important public is significant; there are, however, ethical dilemmas inherent in the very nature of that relationship.