Just a few ethics articles jumped out at me this week. The Kardashians once again grabbed headlines and there is interesting ethics research from WE and the Page Center.
Mark McClennan, APR, Fellow PRSA
Mark W. McClennan, APR, Fellow PRSA, is the general manager of C+C's Boston office. C+C is a communications agency all about the good and purpose-driven brands. He has more than 20 years of tech and fintech agency experience, served as the 2016 National Chair of PRSA, drove the creation of the PRSA Ethics App and is the host of EthicalVoices.com
Renea Morris, APR, Fellow PRSA, the Vice Chancellor for Marketing and Communications at the University of Denver, discusses a number of important PR ethics issues including:
1) What to do when you are uneasy with your company’s growth strategy?
2) Why organizations should worry less about filtering people’s comments on social channels and trust the people doing the work?
3) Where can Higher Ed improve?
This week the most interesting ethics stories highlighted how failure to disclose information cost a company $200 million and the crackdown on greenwashing.
Kena Lewis APR, Fellow PRSA, the Senior Director of Public Affairs and Media Relations at Orlando Health. discusses several important ethics issues, including:
1) What to do ethically when your boss is the problem
2) The ethical challenges of online identity
3) The most important ethics priority for healthcare communicators
4) How do you balance safeguarding confidences with transparency and honesty?
This week there were quite a few ethical issues. TikTok was involved in two, including it suggesting misinformation to promoting unhealthy viral challenges. Another common theme was where do you draw the boundaries when it comes to student loan forgiveness to public/work-life boundaries. There were also a few articles that showed multiple facets of purpose and greenwashing.
For Ethics Month, I wanted to look at new topics and geographies. Joining me this week is Alex Dance, the Managing Director of ERA Communications in Cambodia.
He discusses several important ethics issues, including:
1) What should you do when clients are even tangentially affiliated with a coup?
2) The state of misinformation in Cambodia
3) The impact of influencers on Cambodians
4) Ethical challenges with clickbait
This week there were almost too many PR ethics stories, and almost all of them are powerful. From PRWeek and Google highlight the long DEI road ahead and new ways to approach it; to advocacy, exploitation, AI, Art, and conflict of interest…there is an ethics topic for everyone.
Jamie Floer, APR, CPRC, Fellow PRSA, the Communications Manager for the Toho Water Authority, discusses a number of ethics issues, including:
1) How to successfully advocate for transparency
2) How to protect your company’s reputation when other similar brands are having ethics failures
3) Why we need to keep ethics front and center
Once again, I didn’t have to look far for ethics stories this week. I strongly encourage everyone to read the HBR study on what ethical failures customers are least likely to accept. There are also videos and Webinars from PRSA and PRCA and a link to some great ethics swag.
This week in public relations ethics there were some really interesting articles that look at duty, leadership and the need for counsel.