Some years ago, I was invited to a workshop sponsored by some National Basketball Association big wheels. The subject for the evening was something along the lines of “Ethics and the Student Athlete.”
Before you get too smug about the oxymoronic aspect of this topic, you should know that both speakers and audience seemed truly serious about the discussion as well as the cocktails and snacks.
The event was produced by the PR operation of the local NBA team, as far as I can recall.
Somewhere in the give and take, I asked for a judgment on a question that had troubled me: would it not be more ethical, or just plain ethical, for a scholarship athlete who leaves before graduation to become a professional to be required to repay the college for the time spent there that gave him or her the chance for wide exposure so that professional teams came calling with lots of money? Or, in the alternative, might it not be ethical for the pro vultures to reimburse the educational institution?
When does the conduct of a client or prospective client impact the PR practitioner's ethical standing? |
You could have heard a feather pound on the floor … forget the proverbial pin! I had spoken heresy.
Once the idea had sunk in, however, derisive laughter replaced the shock, and I was the target. The rest of the evening was spent developing facetious ways to manipulate the idea of ethics, suggesting there is, after all, a limit to all this goody two-shoes business of ethical behavior, especially if it got in the way of money.
I mention this event simply because the idea of ethical PR behavior has been tossed around on these pages rather loosely for some time and especially since the beginning of the presidential campaign, whose real start has been lost in memory and questionable ethical activity.
Among the questions that have emerged is when does the conduct of a client or prospective client impact the PR practitioner’s ethical standing if he or she seeks and/or accepts money to refurbish the image of someone, some nation, company or institution whose history and behavior are considered to be unsavory or far worse?
Just as important: is this really a question many really care about these days?
After 33 years of counseling, speaking and writing as part of my business here and overseas, I certainly do consider this important and feel certain many who read this fine publication agree. Yet it remains untested to any degree by those in PR organizations and associations when it comes to heavily financed accounts like those of Libya, Myanmar, a variety of unsavory political figures, corporate crooks and on and on. The clearly deciding factor is the buck, and, frankly, who among us is really ready to refuse a few million plus expenses to do some fun work on Capitol Hill with the certain knowledge there is more where that came from?
More time has been spent in responses to articles here on the career of Mark Penn than, for example, whether it is ethical for a former Speaker-designate of the U.S. House of Representatives to work for an acknowledged murderer like Muammar Gadaffi. You may recall Gadaffi not only conceded he abetted the slaughter of a plane load of passengers over Lockerbie, Scotland, offered billions in repentance to the families and only recently appealed the idea of having actually to fork over the money. Yet the Libyan dictator and formerly noted terrorist now beloved by George W Bush and Tony Blair, not to mention the United Nations is spending $2.5 million on the Livingston Group and no doubt participating in the U.S./Libya Business Association. [See “Ransoming Truth and Responsibility”, O’Dwyer, May 15, 2006.]
So when and why and how do we introduce ethical judgment into what we do when the scales are so imbalanced and challenging? The real questions are: is it naïve to spend so much time on the subject of ethics? Is it lousy business to let something like the character and record of a client cloud a firm’s commitment to profit? Are clients, like medical patients, entitled to protection no matter who they are?
When one considers that some pretty prominent PR firms and counselors were involved in refurbishing the images of not only Gadaffi but the likes of Mussolini, Hitler, Nixon and others who did some questionable things in wartime, perhaps the question of ethics becomes moot and useful only depending on whose proverbial ox is gored at the time.
However, given the popularity of the discussion, the fact of committees in journalism and PR organizations, perhaps it would be useful for an industry that has achieved such maturity and growth at least to review what that thing “ethics” really means and whether there are any penalties for its manipulation and misuse.
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Joseph J. Honick is an international consultant to business and government and writes for many publications, including www.huntingtonnews.net. Honick can be reached at [email protected]. |