This week on Ethical Voices, Robin Schell and Stacey Smith, senior counsel and partners at Jackson, Jackson & Wagner discuss a number of key PR and communication ethics issues, including:
• What to do when a client asks you to anonymously leak information
• Ethical issues with transparency and in-person research
• How to ethically leverage appeals to emotion
• The one ethics guidepost every PR pro needs to keep top of mind
Angela Sinickas the CEO of Sinickas Communications, discusses a number of key issues, including:
• What to do ethically when you realize you work at a company rife with sexism and racism
• Ethical missteps in the PR proposal process
• How ethics mistakes can haunt you for years (and how to overcome them)
• How to ethically deal with people with an agenda
Kim Sample, president of the PR Council discusses a number of key ethics issues, including:
• How to handle unethical client requests
• Best practices for building an ethical agency culture
• Ethical challenges with controversial clients and employee activism
Mike Neumeier, the CEO of Arketi Group, shares his insight on how PR pros can deal with ethics issues, including:
• What to do when a manager or competitor overpromises
• How and when to disclose
• Unexpected challenges with paid media
Darryl Salerno, the owner of Second Quadrant Solutions, which has helped more than a hundred small, mid-sized and large agencies improve their performance and profitability, discusses a number of key ethics issues, including:
• Why you can’t buy your clients televisions
• The ethics of time sheets
Patrice Tanaka, co-founder of three award winning PR and marketing agencies and currently the Chief Joy Officer at Joyful Planet discusses number of key topics including:
• What questions should you ask to make sure you are hiring ethical people?
• How can you really demonstrate to your employees the importance of living your ethical code?
• Should you only hire people that know ballroom dancing?
In a wide-ranging conversation, Fred Cook, the Chairman of Golin and the Director of the USC Center for Public Relations discusses a number of important issues, including:
• Why understanding communications is not enough for ethical PR pros
• Where there is a disconnect between CEOs and PR pros
• Thriving as the challenge of fake news increases
• The business impact of ethical lapses by agencies
Beth Monaghan, co-founder and CEO of Inkhouse discusses a number of key PR ethics challenges, including:
– What to do when your client asks you to leak confidential documents
– How to ethically handle high-performing, toxic employees
– Steps every agency and business can take to help drive panel diversity
Michael Lasky, the co-chair of the litigation practice group of Davis and Gilbert, shares great insight on a number of topics including:
• The ethics of talent migration
• The intersection of creativity, ethics and legality
Joining me on this week’s episode is Roger Friedensen, a partner at Forge Communications, which is a research and communication strategy firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. Roger is a great PR professional and an even better guitar player.
In this interview, Roger discusses:
• When poor word choice can cause an ethics crisis
• How technology will create new ethics dilemmas
• The power of looking in the mirror
• Practical ethics advice from the Torah