Ying & Yang

It’s not a lie if you don’t say anything...

Well some people would say it is but in the technical sense (and let’s face it, that’s the one that counts) you’re not, however I think it’s fair to say that it isn’t 'protecting and advancing the free flow of accurate and truthful information' (PRSA, 2010). So how can we, as PR practitioners, possibly justify that? Simply put; it’s not our responsibility.

Barney and Black (Holt, 2002) draw the comparison of PR practitioners and lawyers, in that it is someone else’s responsibility to act as a counterbalance, to be the ying to our yang! In essence practitioners have ‘no obligation to consider the public interest’ (Holt, 2002) and this job would essentially fall to journalists and other such figures. You can see the argument there, if everyone did their jobs well and thorough it would be a fair system, but that reliance on quality journalism is presumptuous and indeed ‘opponents say because a counterbalancing message is not guaranteed, practitioners cannot afford to overlook the public interest in ethical decision-making’ (Holt, 2002).

But to say it cannot be overlooked does not mean it should completely dictate influence either, and furthermore what is considered to be in the public interest is open to interpretation!

Let’s take for instance Nike who were accused of ‘tolerating sweatshops’, now is this in the public interest of the UK? There is no denying that it is ethically unacceptable but does it class as being in the public interest of the UK and its Nike consumers? It doesn’t directly affect them, but then it could be argued that they deserve to be aware of the way in which a company they support acts and practices globally as well as nationally. I think in this case as a consumer I do believe that is the case, but put in Nike PR department’s shoes... what people don’t know won’t hurt them. But that is not something that can be relied upon and I think the crux of the matter is to encourage change before knowledge is made public knowledge by the counterbalancing forces of journalism prevail!