Ethical Public Relations: Not an Oxymoron

The Public Relations department is frequently the ethical heart of an organization. Internal and external PR communications control of the flow of good and bad news to the staff and community. The PR team copes with company crises. PR pros sit at the elbows of top officers drafting a company's mission statements, its strategies, its vision.

PR people are often put on the spot — if not to determine the morality of a course, at least to help envision the fallout. Fortunately there are valuable touchstone tools for finding our way.

We might dive deep into pools of ethical thoughts by such as Bentham, Kant, Rawls and Machiavelli. Ethics theories range from Utilitarianism ("The greatest good for the greatest number") to Deontology ("Do what is right, though the world should perish").