Public Relations Ethics

Lectures in the course :

Important questions we need to answer  1) What are public relations?  2) What is ethics?

1) Public relations  Public= refers to people in community or society  Society includes; consumers, buyers, sellers, competitors, shareholders, businesses, government, producers etc.  All these groups of people called stakeholders.  Stakeholders- directly or indirectly affected by the actions of company

 Relations = connections : verbal or non verbal,  From public relations view, relation/connection between company and stakeholders

 This means communication important foundation for Public relations.  Will look at communication theory, Communication theory refers to the transferring of information from one person to another, or group of people to another group of people.  Butterick refers to the transfer of information from the sender to the receiver.

 Harlow also gives definition that relates to communication,  Mentions “establish mutual lines of communication”  Further say public relations uses good communication as its “principal tools”.

 Grunig and Hunt state public relations is the “management of communication between an organisation and its publics”  Communication is important aspect of public relations, captures following keywords according to Wilcox and Cameron (2012:8) :

 Deliberate- communication for purpose, such as providing information  Planned- PR is well thought out, research done, problems solved  Performance- in order for PR to be effective, needs policies cater to public needs.

 Public interest-PR should consider the needs of both parties involved. E.g: organisation and public  Two way communication-involves giver of information and receiver of information  receiver must be given place to engage with information they receive.  Management function- top management needs to play role in managing conflict, managing relations that corporation has with public etc.