The Importance of Ethics in Public Relations

In public relations, it is extremely important to provide trust between a company and its public. Providing false information to make a company look better is easy to do as it can make their image look better; however, it is unethical and can create bigger problems down the road. 

As a professional working in the public relations field, one needs to constantly be asking themselves questions when working for a client. One needs to consider: How is this going to affect my client’s reputation, your personal reputation, and how is this decision going to affect the public relations field as a whole? When working in the public relations field, you are working with many people across all different departments. It is all about building relationships and maintaining a level of trust.

Working with social media, the news and relating with the public, it can sometimes be easy to skew the facts. When you work for a large company, it is important to stay open with your public. Public relations is all about relationships that you make with your public. Relationships are built off an element of trust. If the trust is lost, people are going to move on to another company because they no longer know what to expect from you. Even when the company makes a mistake, they need to inform the public to show that they have respect for their clients.

Some key values that should be important to everyone working in PR include honesty, truth, integrity and transparency. People look for these qualities in a person when they are trying to make relationships in everyday life. Why should it be different when they are looking for a company to buy from? They want to know that everything they are advertising is true, the words on the label include all the correct information, and when they mess up, they apologize and clearly explain what happened. 

It is important to remember that the entire company relies on the public relations department. We are the people who build relationships and lay the foundation for trust. It is our job to maintain that and allow the company to grow from there. When people start to put their complete trust in your company, that is when they begin to tell others about it. Strong public relations is achieved when word-of-mouth promotion and good publicity occur, which is the ultimate goal of any public relations department.

Written by Haley Duford