After viewing this chapter, I got a closer look to how to be a good PR practitioner.
Helping one particular organization which you are working for to be responsible for their effects on the social and physical environments is very important which this chapter has explained by one word “Conscience”.
Within “Ethics”, from what I have learnt via reading this chapter, Michael Josephson has mentioned although there are a wide cultures existing in this world currently there are always 10 values to be in common for us to behave ethically. Honesty, integrity, keeping promises, fidelity, fairness, caring for others, respect for others, responsible citizenship, pursuit of excellence, and accountability.
Each of the words above seems very important to go through perfectly. However, from my point of view, it is not easy to handle one thing while considering all these ten values, and what we need to do is to think carefully, intensely, or we can actually write down the steps which we are going to cover and ensure that we will follow these first ten values.
Being ethical or unethical cannot judge a person whether he is good or bad. The only thing causes being unethical is to ignore the requirements which had been required to act as ethical behaviour.
To avoid some unethical and harmful problems, we need to be careful. Also, we need thorough ethical learning, and the ability to use systematic methods to encompass respect, and balance multiple viewpoints. That is to say, we must find the easiest way to show the public the best course of action.
To make it in reality, this chapter gave us some little tips to be mindful of ethics in every situation. There are three sessions, the first is to be willing to see ethics as in a way of making it visible, and the second one is aware of ethics as a challenging area and therefore constantly increasing their knowledge. In this session, the steps of fostering the knowledge aspect of mindfulness are reading, then thinking critically about and discussing what various people have written on ethics, not only in books and academic articles but also in blogs and online forums. The third one is simply called “skill”, in order to explain this, what we should do is to discuss, practice, combine, select, and apply them everyday as part of regular public relations activity.
These above are what influenced me most, since these things seem to be very easy to understand but they are difficult to implement.
I agree with your point that public relations ethics theory can be easy to understand but it is difficult to implement. Many times, to carry out something, not just in the public relations field, will not always allow you to hold on to your beliefs and moral values. You have to make a choice and this choice sometimes may mean losing something forever. Thus, every job will have its own challenges and ethics is just one of the challenges which a public relations practitioner need to face.
ReplyDelete-Michelle Fok Yan Ping