It's Ethics Month for PRSA

September is Ethics Month for PRSA. Not sure what that means in terms of actual practice. As noted below, we at the Silicon Valley chapter are holding a panel on online ethics on Oct. 30, rescheduled from last week.

Whatever else PRSA is doing, they did publish an interesting roundtable discusion by members of their Board of Ethics and Professional Standards regarding "How to ethically engage new media." Here's a sample of the conversation (arguably the most on-point section of the piece):

James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, APR, Fellow PRSA: During this discussion, our objective is to answer this question, “What are the most urgent or important ethical issues or questions facing public relations and new media?”

Robert D. Frause, APR, Fellow PRSA: Deception is high on the list of things that can happen in the new media environment. We need to pay close attention to how we distribute messages and who we distribute them for. This could apply to everything from blogs to podcasts to wikis, even on Web sites. Making sure we disclose who we’re working for is imperative, especially in the new media.

Keith V. Mabee, APR: Transparency is the watchword in the public domain . . . who’s the real source, so embedded intent and purported knowledge are clear to the audience.

Patricia A. Grey, APR: My greatest concern around social media is the issue of reputation management. Some people use social media to damage or ruin the reputation of a company or person. Managing a virtual attack on reputation is a real dilemma in a world where so many different sources of information are available on the Internet.

Patricia T. Whalen, Ph.D., APR: One of the most urgent things we as PR practitioners have to get our hands around is tracking what is being said about our organizations. There are literally millions of bloggers out there. How do we stay on top of it all? It’s critical that we are able to identify where things are being said about us and react quickly, so it doesn’t turn into a crisis that could destroy our reputation.

Linda Welter Cohen, APR: One of the main concerns I have is inaccurate information that is disseminated through new media by sources that are not credible or ethical. Unfortunately, our target audiences may believe this inaccurate information, which can be very damaging to our company’s or client’s reputation.

Another interesting idea floated at the end of the panel: that PRSA ought to be much more proactive and visible in telling the business community and the public in general where the organization stands on issues such as online ethics:

Frause: We definitely have a 100 percent responsibility to educate our members, but I also think we have a responsibility as one of the leaders in the communication business — whether it’s marketing, advertising or public relations — to have commentary with regard to communication in general. That’s a big mistake we’ve made over the years; we’ve never done a comprehensive editorial tour to say what we believe in, or what our ethics code is. It’s basically between us and the members, and I don’t think most business leaders know who we are or what we espouse. The business community needs to know where the Public Relations Society of America is with regard to ethics, whether it’s the new media or the old media.