Ethic of Communication Strategy

As a journalist and potential professional public relations who may work for politicians, I would like to adopt openness and transparency principles policies and consider interests and trustable information base on honesty with my stakeholders and audience. I embrace responsibility for my professional activities and act as an accountable forthright public relation who gives truthful news and ideas/guidance to his/her readers or listeners. Debate form or referendum policy is the most suitable strategy for citizens who favor democracy. One of the goals of public relations is to influence society and persuade in the direction leading to the goals of organizations, with the help of politicians, or sponsors. The dangerous thing is not to find and see the fine line between manipulation and persuasion because the majority of the U.S. firms, companies, or institutes have a lack of ethical statements on their online home page that is designed more for advertising than be the expression of views/facts of the values of the corporations. “Public relations ethics is often seen as an oxymoron (Berger & Reber, 2006; Parsons, 2008) since the industry is notorious for manipulative, deceptive, and irresponsible tactics to achieve the goals of the organizations it serves.” (Toledano, 2016). The issue arises when a medium shift to online media and PR is impacted with the new tools to use social media without considering the ethics of communication and which brings with itself new ethical conflict. According to Phillips and Young (2009), who identified issues around “transparency, porosity, agency, richness, and reach”. Under the heading of transparency, they relate to such issues as the need for a disclaimer about sponsors; the problem of cyber-astroturfing (i.e., organizing online front groups); and the bypassing of media gatekeepers.” (Toledano, 2016). Recently, the most pressing issue in terms of ethics and online communication is that the professionals don’t provide accurate informational and not unbiased news for the media to keep a neutral and balanced view. Lobbyists and the richest organizations abuse the democratic system by interfering with the social media and news agencies for their selfish interests. Exclusively, lobbyist uses political advice to seek information and control the system or organizations. Even, they would buy the media or own the media to have a greater influence on public opinion. The issue arises when we don’t have a clear policy or control on social media to majored in their honesty or accuracy. As we studied, some giant companies such as Microsoft, MacDonald, Sears, Walmart, Sony…had hidden paid bloggers or tweeter writers to create positive stories or reviews on their products. This misleading happened in politics too, they feed the public with false or fake news. This chaos is not only helping to confuse the readers or the listeners but also, through that people lost their trust and hopes in them. The crisis pops up when a society loses balance and people become biased, illogical, and do not have tolerance for any criticism. This has happened recently in the election of 2020. As you may have noticed, some television stations shut the president's speech during his talk, and other social media or news agencies were silent about this undemocratic behavior that put our democracy in danger. Regardless of who is talking or which party owns the media, someday another type of media might shut down a new president regardless of his or her democratic or undemocratic beliefs. The question is why do they decide for us what to hear and what not to hear. Silencing or censoring some parts of the truth are the most important issues that we are facing today with this new communication system. Organizations, politicians, or even private businesses only accept positive reviews which is not an ethical strategy. “As important, advertisers and public relations professionals pitching story ideas to bloggers must never insist on positive coverage. It is essential that the integrity of the blogger to write truthfully and openly about his/her actual experiences must be preserved.” (Jensen, R., 2011). Additionally, “In addressing such matters, ethics scholar David Martinson has argued that it is incumbent on all communication professionals to “guard against a form of censorship where unpopular ideas are denied a hearing not because of formal governmental legal restrictions, but because of the informal—and oftentimes much more insidious—restrictions that are so often responsible for restricting genuine access to the marketplace of ideas.” (Fitzpatrick, 2006).

As a result, public relations and practitioners have to examine ethical elements and extant respect to critics and disagreements and developed authentic, truthful information and social responsibility to others and their readers. As Fitzpatrick suggested, “The joint statement was predicated on three ethical principles: practitioners should tell the truth, minimize harm to others, and be accountable for their actions. The joint statement identified fifteen guidelines for practitioners to follow in four broad areas: providing fact-based content, being objective advocates, earning public trust, and educating the profession.” (Fitzpatrick, 2006).

Illustration by Paul Blow