A PR PRACTICE


If you've never read American writer Randy Cohen's syndicated newspaper column on ˜Everyday Ethics , now would be a good time to start. Recently a headline on his question-answer column was ˜So, just when does PR become plagiarism? [ 1] And his answer to the question just might surprise you.

A reader wrote in to him that he was considering hiring a PR ˜representative to help him promote his new business but was concerned about the PR person writing letters for him ” essentially ghost writing ”with his name signed to them. The reader asked if it might not be lying to sign his name to words written by another.

This seems like a rather familiar scenario in public relations offices across North America and probably around the world. Every day we write speeches, memos, annual report letters, product and service marketing letters and so much more for the employers and clients who have hired us to help them with their communication challenges. They have hired us because we possess the skills that they lack.

Cohen's response was to advise us that ˜context is all. He suggests that when the president of the United States gives a speech, the public assumes that the words are not his own specifically , rather written by a speech writer and that this is acceptable because the public knows this. I'm not sure from where he derived this conclusion, but I'm not as certain as Cohen is that most people in a democratic society really do realize that political speeches are often (usually) written by professional speech writers ”public relations people.

Notwithstanding his possibly inaccurate conclusion here, Cohen goes on to suggest that when someone's name appears on such things as novels , magazine articles or op-ed pieces, the assumption is that the person actually penned the words, thus for another person's name to appear is, in fact, lying. To follow this line of reasoning further, we could assume that anyone who has ever hired a ghost writer is essentially lying to the public. That would probably come as quite a surprise to all those celebrities , sports stars and political heavyweights who hired writers to pen their memoirs. I don't think that it ever occurred to them that they were putting their signatures to anything but their own thoughts expressed in such a way that people might actually read them. Indeed, their readers may or may not realize that the books have been ghost written, but they still recognize that the ideas came from the subject of the book.

[ 1] Cohen, R (2003) So, just when does PR become plagiarism? The Halifax Chronicle-Herald , Saturday, 29 November




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

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net