PRSA Ethics

In reading the PRSA website, they define many aspects of Public Relations and how one should conduct PR in a professional manor. I have taken a business ethics class and a general ethics class, and it seems that most of the things that they discuss are second nature to most people. What comes in trouble is when the public relations professionals take this for granted and manipulate their power in a negative manor. Especially looking at the ethics section on the page, you can see that the PRSA do not take ethics lightly. They want to be a reputable association that members can take pride in being a member, even allowing for people who have any confusion on the issue to confer with the Board of Ethics and Professional Standards.

This is hugely important, especially when all that the public sees is put out by the P.R. department similar to what my industry will (hopefully) see as a marketing executive. Marketing is very similar to public relations, while P.R. tends to be more hindsight. As a marketer, I need to have very strong ethics and not be there to mislead the consumer but inform and promote. Not only is it ethically wrong to deceive the consumer it's illegal and very very costly to do so.

What struck me as pretty interesting is how big of advocates for this profession the PRSA is. They post many various rebuttals to any media outlet that poses a discussion towards the profession, professionally and curteously informing the public into the truth. I did not know that anyone did this but I think that it's very good for an industry to be able to show how successful and beneficial their members are.