Happy December! Less than five weeks left in the year, with the holidays, CES and NRF fast approaching. One thing that hasn’t changed is the plethora of ethics issues. There are a few doozies to highlight this week.
Category: This Week in PR Ethics
Total 96 Posts
Following are 93 ethics issues the students and I identified and discussed. These stories were ripped from the headlines. If you missed them, they are worth another review. They make great reading and great discussion for the dinner table. Most even have nothing to do with politics. And only a few deal with sports….
While I could probably just write KFC and Twitter, drop the mic and walk away this week – there are some nuances that are worthy of further exploration.
Well, the elections sure were interesting. Marlene Neill had a great assignment for her students this week where they had to analyze a political ad of their choice to see if it was ethical. Beyond the elections, the common theme in PR ethics issues this week was (the lack of) virtue.
This week the ethical issues in public relations rain the gamut, but the core theme was fairness. Fairness in pay equity, fairness in AI decisioning, fairness in promotions, and fairness in accountability.
When I started gathering ethics stories for the week, I was sad because I thought it would be a quiet week. Ooh boy was I wrong. From deepfakes, to destruction and self-destruction (and I am not talking the Patriots), to politics and COP27 there is something for everyone.
This week there were a wide range of ethical issues from slum tourism to sensationalistic news to the importance of stakeholders. But my favorite is celebrating the positive, virtuous action by a radio station show host.
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.
This week the most interesting ethics stories highlighted how failure to disclose information cost a company $200 million and the crackdown on greenwashing.
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.