week six

'The Legal Environment' and 'Ethical Practice'

'The Legal Environment'

The readings suggest that public relation decisions must be made in context of the ‘legal environment’. But when legal risks are being assessed, strategies to harm must take account of the commercial and professional risks arising from the legal action. Practitioners need a rounded knowledge of laws that affect their work. The global nature of business and communication means individual public relations practitioners face a minefield of legal obligation as domestic jurisdictions attempt to provide a regulatory framework for global product. Thus the practitioners must examine some major legal risks in more detail. Legal issues can arise in relation to negligence, ones duty of care to clients and the general public, defamation, contracts, statutory obligations regarding liability and consumer protection and intellectual property laws.

Johnston & Zawawi also suggest that maintaining a good public image and reputation is pivotal to good PR practice, in some circumstances it may be better to avoid litigation and seek alternative means of dispute resolution. Under common law the tests for defamation exists where a publication exposed plaintiff to hatred/contempt/ridicule, lowered the plaintiff’s reputation or caused the plaintiff to be avoided/shunned. A company has to work on the legal path for:

• protecting their reputation in industry.
• protecting their creative ideas.
• the practitioners duty for care and respect of other's rights.
• work the purpose of creating global legal contracts in a global legal environment.
• using the technology in a wise way by putting legal directions in public context.

chapter 4 also talks about The Trade Practice Act 1974(Cth), which helps in:

• Promotional activities activities associated with the supply of goods and services to actual or potential customers have trading and commercial character.
• Intention is irrelevant
• Conduct that is merely likely to mislead or deceive in banned by the Act.
• Disclaimers and exemption clauses cannot usually excuse misleading and deceptive conduct.
• Silence may constitute misleading a deceptive conduct.
• Statements of opinion may mislead or deceive.

Working with legal input, public relation practitioners can move towards a systematic approach to dealing with the law. Organisations should move towards developing a legal strategy for their area specialty, setting benchmarks of best practice in potential problem areas, such as contract law, intellectual property, defamation, contempt and consumer protection law. Developing a legal strategy and compliance systems will not eliminate legal problems, but will go a long way towards minimising harm arising from the problems.

'Ethical Practice'

According to Johnston & Zawawi ethics refer to the personal values which underpin the behaviour and moral choices made by individual in response to a specific situation. Ethics are standards of integrity- in a nutshell ethics is about doing the right thing.
In a business, ethics is is about prioritising moral values for an organisation and ensuring its behaviours are aligned with those values. In a Public relation practice, ethical behaviour relates both to the practitioner and to organisation. The practitioners also need to serve public interest. He needs to ask 'will my decision benefit society, even if I hurt myself, my client, my employer or my profession?' Seib and Fitzpatrick (1995) talk about the five duties of public relations professionals as being to oneself, the client, the employer, the profession and society.
The potter boxidentifies ethics in situation, values, principles and loyalties. Three basic ethical doctrines (109). Deontology is the doctrine that ethics is duty-based and relies on moral obligation regardless of the consequences. This system depends on the morals and self-discipline of the individual, however, it will change from person to person depending on their cultural and traditional biases.

PR practice takes care of connection between both ethics and PR by upholding moral and ethical ideals. PR practitioners build a positive image and create a respected organisation throughout the many publics.

Though, the ethical dilemmas, at times become hard to crack the challenges. The challenges can be divided down into three aspects:-

• Interpersonal
• Organisational
• Stakeholder

Most ethical dilemmas come from social responsibility issues and from the relationship issues. These dilemmas usually the result of a poor relationship, inadequate corporate standards and conflicting obligations.
The purpose of PR is to build strong relationships with organisations and different publics to create a pleasant environment in which varying businesses, organisations etc can operate. This conducive environment can only be fully up and running with the help of law and ethics.

Johnston & Zawawi explains "As ethics is important to organisational excellence on the one hand and to public relations on the other, practitioners should be at the forefront of the movement for ethical organisational conduct."

A connection between both ethics and PR is cruical for a PR practice. By upholding moral and ethical ideals PR practitioners build a positive image and create a respected organisation throughout the many publics.The role of a PR practitioner does not remain till this extent. He needs to work as

• Advocate
• Counsellor
• Corporate Monitor, and
• Corporate Conscience

There is a common perception about the PR people that they are the ones who are out to benefit their organisations first and foremost, though no one realises that there are many legal and ethical codes and statutes in place that help govern such behaviour, the common stereotype is somewhat outdated as legal consequences are more common in our age of litigation, therefore making practitioners and their job more socially responsible.