Preface

Ten years ago, I began teaching a course in organizational public relations to second-year public relations students in our four-year undergraduate degree programme. At the time, the curriculum required a section on ethics. To my colleagues in the department, I appeared to be the most likely candidate to teach this since my background was in medical communications and I had already co- authored two books ”one a textbook and one a trade book ”on healthcare ethics. Surely this would be a natural progression for me. To some extent they were right.

I began doing background research on the ˜field of public relations ethics. The ˜field was small to say the least. Whereas there was much material in the academic journals as well as in industry publications about the status of ethics and ethical behaviour and what ought to be done in both the academic discipline (we ought to be teaching it) and the practice of public relations (we ought to be more ethical), there was really very little that was useful for either neophyte or seasoned practitioners in their daily practice. As a budding academic, I jumped into the fray and began some academic publishing to contribute to the theoretical basis. This, however, did not help much in trying to find practical materials for helping both students and practitioners to understand the ethical issues inherent in our field, nor did it help them to clarify their own principles and values in making ethically defensible decisions.

This book is the result of this search for more practically useful materials and is my contribution to helping public relations practitioners understand when they are faced with ethical dilemmas and how to think about their actions and the consequences. Indeed, it is directed toward public relations practitioners and all those interested in public communication who seek an examination of the practical applications of ethical thinking. But, perhaps even more important, this book is for those who would not normally read a book about ethics. It has been my experience that those who avoid ethics books do so often because the material that they have been exposed to in the past seemed so far away from their real worlds . I hope that this book will bring ethics closer to that everyday reality. The fact that a non-academic approach to ethics in our professional discipline is even in your hands is a testimony to the forward thinking on the part of the Institute for Public Relations in the UK.

The purpose of Ethics in Public Relations: A Guide to Best Practice is threefold:

• to provide you with a framework for understanding important ethical issues in the field of public relations and corporate communications today and in the future;

• to help you to develop an attitude that supports the concept that ethics is key to professionalism and credibility in the field; and

• to assist you in your everyday ethical decision-making.

The aim of this book is not to provide another tome on the philosophical ethical theory that is so prevalent in many business ethics books today (and which students at the undergraduate level seem to be singularly averse to), rather to relate underlying theories directly to everyday issues. I hope that you will appreciate the distinctly non-academic style of this book which I think is so important to get you to think about your personal and professional value systems so that you can do some real soul-searching. I believe that taking a long, hard look at ourselves is where ethical thought really begins, but it does highlight an important question: Can you really learn ethics?

Any professor who believes that his or her book or course on ethics will ensure ethics in practice is living in a dream world. I believe that all we can reasonably hope to accomplish is to make students and practitioners alike think about the issues and perhaps see situations in more than a black and white way. Ethics in this book is akin to drawing a black line through a grey area. You are as comfortable as possible with where you draw the black line, but the situation may still be grey. However, by the time you reach the final chapter of this book, I believe that you may have a better answer, at least for yourself, to the question about whether or not ethics can be learnt.

To get you to that point, the book is divided into four parts . In the first part, we'll examine together some of the underlying considerations and principles that generally guide ethical thinking. Part 2 focuses on you; how your own sense of morality developed and how you use that in situations that have a direct, personal impact on you. The third part places under an ethical microscope some of the strategies and tactics that are widely used in public relations today. Finally, we take a broader perspective by looking at the role public relations plays in the ethics of organizations in general and the future of our field.

I would be very interested in how this book might have helped you in your study and practice of public relations in the 21st century. Please let me know.